


you're asleep in me (i can't help but smile)

by seeyousoo



Series: mischief managed [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Magical Mystery, Multi, Slow Burn, True Love's Kiss, baekchen are friends but are they tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 55,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeyousoo/pseuds/seeyousoo
Summary: Trust Chanyeol to be the one person in the entirety of the Wizarding world who can only be woken by true love's kiss.Alternatively: Chanyeol is naturally a heavy sleeper but this is just ridiculous.





	1. when morning comes

**Author's Note:**

> main and chapter titles are taken from [she's dreaming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSQbWlgxHK0) by exo

Jongdae is very good at a lot of things.

He feels no shame in admitting that he is a boy of many talents and skills, a hardworking student across all fields and probably one of the smartest and most capable in his year. As a muggleborn, it had been a challenge at first to adapt to the brilliant and terrifying world of magic and wizardry, the shock of diving head first into a brand new and amazingly vast world leaving him fighting for breath in a sea of people far more familiar with everything then he was. But now, at sixteen years old, Jongdae can safely say he has risen from whatever sorry hole he found himself in five years ago and taken on the magic world with great zeal, rarely struggling with whatever obstacle he has to face.

Or at least he likes to think so.

"Ugh, please," Jongdae whines, dropping his quill onto the table with a noisy clatter and ignoring the glares of the other students studying around him as he drapes himself across the desk, "I'm dying here! Please can I have a break? Please?"

Luhan looks up from his book from where he is sat across from Jongdae and gives him an unimpressed look, one eyebrow raised. "You've almost finished. You only have another foot to go. If you stop acting like a Second Year and get on with it you can be done within the hour."

Jongdae bangs his head onto the table. "We've been here for hours already! I can feel my life draining away from me, I'll be as wrinkled as Merlin's old ball-sack by the time I finish this bloody essay."

"Well that's what you get for leaving it to the last minute like you always do, dumb ass."

Frowning, Jongdae turns his head to the side and presses his cheek into his essay where it sits in front of him. If only Minseok wasn't at quidditch practise, he could have asked him to help with his Arithmancy homework and not have to suffer under Luhan's judging gaze. It's unfortunate that Luhan is arguably the best person at the subject in the entire school besides the professor herself and the only person willing to put up with Jongdae's incessant whining if it meant the younger could hand in an essay that wouldn't immediately fail. "This is mean," he grumbles, "I came to you, like the delicate little flower I am, and begged you nicely upon my knees for mercy from my suffering and all you do is bully me and call me nasty names. I'm hurt."

Sighing deeply, Luhan closes his book and uses it to jab at Jongdae's crown until the younger stops grouching to himself. "It's almost dinner. If you finish this paragraph before then, I'll look at it and you can finish after you've eaten. Yes?"

"You were going to make me work through dinner?"

Before Luhan can reply, they hear the sound of a throat being cleared beside them. "Mr Kim?"

Jongdae lifts his head, and upon seeing Madam Victoria, the librarian (and Jongdae's future wife, or so he insists), he instantly sits up straight and flashes his most charming and handsome smile, pointedly ignoring the exaggerated eyeroll Luhan sends him from across the table and the fact he can feel a smudge of ink just above his left temple. "Yes, Madam. How can I be of service?"

She raises a quizzical brow at him and tuts as if she is unimpressed, but Jongdae can see a little smirk creeping onto her lips and rejoices internally. He's irresistible, no matter how hard his friends argue otherwise. Even with ink on his face.

"Mr Kim, I just received a message from the Hospital Wing. Your presence is requested there as soon as you are able."

At that, Jongdae's teasing grin is replaced by a confused frown. "The Hospital Wing? What's happened?"

Madam Victoria shrugs, her long black hair shining in the candle light. "I don't know, I'm afraid. Although, I do believe that a Mr Byun is the one that asked for you."

Byun? Was Baekhyun hurt? When Madam Victoria excuses herself, Jongdae turns to Luhan, worry etched into his features that the elder boy reciprocates. "What do you think's wrong with him?" Luhan asks. Jongdae shrugs and runs a hand through his curls.

"With Baekhyun, it could be anything really. Remember that time Chanyeol accidentally turned him into a slug?"

"I'm sure he's fine," Luhan laughs, reassuring. He reaches over and pats Jongdae on the shoulder. "If he's well enough to ask for you then it's probably only something small."

Jongdae snorts loudly, drawing more glares from the other students in the library. "I hope so. I'd kill him if he died on me." He goes to pack up his things, only getting to put the cap on the ink before Luhan stops him.

"Don't worry about this," Luhan says with a smile, nudging his head in the direction of the exit. "I'll finish this paragraph for you, but you'll have to do the rest by yourself when you get back."

Pulling the elder student into a one armed hug, Jongdae grabs his bag and sprints away. "Thanks, Lu. I owe you one!"

~

Despite being best friends with Jongdae and Chanyeol, the three of them inseparable since they were all sorted into the same house on their first night at Hogwarts, Baekhyun isn't one to get himself into trouble often.

As a group, the boys are known for being rather mischievous, even if it is often not their intention to be so. With naturally curious and excitable personalities, it's not surprising that trouble has a habit of finding them at the most inopportune moments. Take their third year, for example, when Chanyeol accidentally smashed all the pots containing newly grown Mandrakes in the Herbology professor's office, resulting in half the school fainting unexpectedly in the middle of the night. They had only gone into the office to sneak a look at the answers for the test the next day, ending up with busted eardrums and a months worth of detentions that involved squeezing the foul puss from all the bubotubers in the school. Despite how much Baekhyun and Jongdae berated Chanyeol for being an idiot and getting them into that mess, it wasn't long before they found themselves in detention again for turning a fellow student into a mouse for calling Chanyeol 'an ugly monkey boy'.

Being the lightest on his feet, Baekhyun is always able to run away from trouble first - Chanyeol has a habit of falling on his face if he runs too hard and Jongdae is just too darn loud - usually evading capture while the other two are accosted by the numerous prefects and professors that wander the halls. But Baekhyun is nothing if not loyal, and always goes back to join his friends in their punishment. Since becoming a prefect himself, the number of the groups escapades have dwindled in the passing year. Not that either of them are opposed to the odd scheme at some point or another. A particular highlight of their time since gaining responsibility, and Baekhyun's personal favourite incident, occurred when Jongdae made out with a girl during Minseok's birthday party who ended up being the girlfriend of the Ravenclaw quidditch captain. He spent the rest of the day screaming for his life while the whole team chased him around the entire castle. Baekhyun had almost wet himself with laughter watching his friend climb up the statue of the One Eyed Witch like a hairless koala trying to avoid the large and relentless hands of the murderous captain, stomach muscles aching as he eventually calmed down and stepped forward to save his friend from probable death.

(Jongdae likes to think his suffering was all for a good cause, however, as the captain was then removed from his position for assaulting a fellow student, allowing Minseok to take up the role and lead Ravenclaw to victory at the House Cup that year. He doesn't regret that one much, even if his own house lost to an almost embarrassing degree.)

In light of their reputation and history, it's not unusual for Baekhyun to be in the Hospital Wing, most likely recovering from a prank or grilling his friend's asses when they've landed themselves there. However, it is unusual for him to be there alone.

Baekhyun is pacing back and forth outside the entrance to the Hospital Wing when Jongdae finally gets there, panting slightly with sweat beading on his brow from jogging all the way from the library. He calls out his friend's name and Baekhyun looks up, walking over to where Jongdae is leaning against a wall to catch his breath. "Well you took your time," he says teasingly, but it's not hard for Jongdae to miss the lack of force behind his jab and the tension in his face, purple underlining his eyes in deep grooves. Jongdae sweeps his gaze over his friend before standing up straight and facing him directly. "What's up? Are you hurt?"

Baekhyun lets out a strained breath that tickles Jongdae's forehead, cooling him. "Yeah, I'm fine." He grins weakly. "Mostly."

"Mostly? So what am I doing here then? Not that I don't appreciate it, Luhan was ready to staple my ass to the desk if I didn't-"

"It's Chanyeol."

Jongdae's eyes widen, although a part of him isn't surprised. As a person, Chanyeol has always been rather clumsy. As one of his closest friends, Jongdae can safely say he's never bored in Chanyeol's company - the boy is a walking slapstick comedy. One of Jongdae's fondest memories of Chanyeol making a fool of himself is from a year ago when a potion exploded in his face and his neck grew to be about two metres long in a matter of seconds. He was stuck in the hospital wing for about a week until his neck shrank back to its normal size, and had to endure months of after-hours tutoring so he could actually pass his O.W.L.S without blowing himself up. Chanyeol still blushes to the tips of his ears whenever Jongdae brings it up. "What's he done now?" Jongdae sighs. "Did he turn himself into a slug this time?"

He dodges the elbow that Baekhyun aims to his ribs but at least Baekhyun is laughing now, albeit a stilted, half-hearted laugh. "No, he didn't. Although I would have preferred that if I'm honest. This is…"

He runs a hand through his hair. He really does look tired. "I don't even know what this is, Jongdae."

"Right." It's not like Baekhyun to be so serious. Jongdae feels worry curling in his gut. "Baek, what's going on?"

Baekhyun gives him a tense look before pushing the door to the Hospital Wing open and stepping inside, Jongdae following suit.

Chanyeol is in the second to last bed on the far side of the room. He's lying on his back, spread out across his bed with his long limbs filling up the minimal space and socked feet slightly dangling over the edge of the mattress. A thin sheet is draped over him, covering him up to his waist, and Jongdae can see he is still in his pyjamas. Dark brown curls lay thick against the pillow, slightly damp with sweat, causing a few stray strands to stick to his forehead and the tips of his ears.

Despite the uncomfortable position, the boy looks relaxed and content. In fact at first glance anyone would think that Chanyeol was just sleeping.

Upon second glance however, it is easy to see that something is very wrong. The boy is pale, scarily pale, almost sickly in how dull and grey his skin looks. Jongdae walks over and reaches out to touch Chanyeol's hand but he draws back instantly as if he has been burned because Chanyeol is cold, unbelievably cold, as if he is carved from stone and not a living being of flesh and blood. His lips are dry, parted slightly in a relaxed pout, and his chest is rising and falling in slow, deep breaths, barely noticeable to the point that Jongdae almost believed he wasn't breathing at all.

"What the hell," is all Jongdae can come out with. He turns to look at Baekhyun, who shrugs his shoulders and stares back with an equally as lost expression. Turning back to his other friend, Jongdae leans over the bed to see a little closer. Chanyeol's eyelashes rest delicately against his cheeks, but his eyes aren't moving like they usually would when a person sleeps. It's a little unnerving. Reaching out again, he taps the side of Chanyeol's face, watching as his friend's head merely flops to the side and his mouth opens in a breathless gasp.

Chanyeol is a chaotic sleeper. He snores like a hog and grumbles and grunts out loud through his nose, kicks and rolls and tosses himself in all directions like a puppy having a bad dream. Bedsheets end up tangled around his legs and his pillow is almost never on the bed in the morning, knocked to the floor as collateral for the boy's incessant movement. Jongdae is surprised he's managed to sleep next to him every night and not go insane from the constant noise coming from the bed beside his own during the night.

Like this, laid out on this bed like a statue, serene, still, quiet as the grave, it's like everything that Chanyeol is has been stripped away, leaving nothing but an empty grey shell.

"Well. This is different."

Baekhyun hums in response. Jongdae steps away from Chanyeol and keeps moving backwards until the backs of his knees hit the empty hospital bed behind him and he collapses down onto the neatly folded sheets, running his hands over his face. The older boy stays standing, staring at the bed while nibbling at his fingers.

"Baek, what the hell is this? What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know," the other says, his voice cracking, "I found him like this. I thought he was just sleeping, but..."

Footsteps approaching them makes the boys look around in time to see the nurse come up to stand between them at the foot of Chanyeol's bed. She's a kind woman, gentle and bright, and always lets Jongdae have a lollipop from the jar in her office that she keeps for the younger students whenever he has the 'misfortune' to end up under her care. She greets Jongdae with a warm smile. "Hello, Jongdae. I see you got my message."

"Yes, Miss Luna. What's wrong with Chanyeol?"

Her smile falters slightly, and she turns to the boy in question before scanning the parchment in her hands, sighing. "I'm not actually sure. It's quite peculiar." She turns to Baekhyun. "And you say you just found him like this?"

Baekhyun nods. "I went to the dorm when class ended and found him in the same position he was when I left this morning." He speaks to both the nurse and Jongdae, filling the latter in on what he's missed, and Jongdae nods along with him. "His classes start later today so I didn't think much of seeing him still asleep, but when I came back and he was still there I tried to wake him up and he…just wouldn't."

Miss Luna looks at Jongdae then. "Was this the same for you?" she asks, and Jongdae thinks back to when he stumbled out of bed that morning, eyes still glued together with sleep as he fought Baekhyun for the shower, and remembers seeing Chanyeol's snoozing form wrapped up tightly in his bed like a giant cocooned caterpillar before leaving for class. He hadn't returned to the dorm once classes ended for the day, instantly being corralled by a persistent Luhan towards the library as soon as the elder laid eyes on him. "I think so, yeah," he says in reply. "He was definitely asleep when I left the dorm."

Miss Luna hums and jots something down on her parchment. "What was he doing before he fell asleep that night?"

Baekhyun looks to Jongdae. "He was at quidditch practise with me. We're both beaters," Jongdae says.

"Did he hurt himself at all? Any knocks to the head, any accidents?"

Jongdae furrows his brow as he thinks. "Not that I know of. He seemed perfectly fine afterwards. He did go to the dorm earlier than usual but he said that was because he wanted to beat me to the shower."

"Why, do you think he has a concussion or something?" Baekhyun asks the nurse, head tilted to the side in questioning. Miss Luna hums again before scribbling on her parchment.

"It was on my mind. But if he seemed perfectly fine then that's not what's going on here."

They all look at Chanyeol, watching the subtle rise and fall of his chest. Baekhyun reaches out and places a hand on Chanyeol's, curling his fingers around Chanyeol's own and holding him tight. It's quiet for a few moments before Miss Luna speaks, breaking the silence.

"I really don't know what to do with him," she says, frowning. "He's not responded to any rousing spells and I can't confidently give him any potions in case he chokes on them. He doesn't look like he's in pain anywhere or suffering at all. In fact, he looks…"

The word is unsaid but it hangs in the air like poisonous gas, strangling the two teenagers into silence.

Dead.

Chanyeol looks dead.

Miss Luna sighs again. "The most I can do is keep him here and monitor him to make sure he doesn't get any worse. There's very little I can do medically besides giving him fluids and some food so he doesn't waste away, but hopefully we'll see a change before that happens." She places a hand on each boy's shoulder and squeezes in reassurance. "I'll contact my colleagues at St Mungo's to see if they can do anything to help."

"Thank you, Miss Luna."

She smiles sweetly at them and squeezes their shoulders again before letting go. "It's no problem. You boys had best get some food and rest. I believe dinner would have started by now." It's a subtle command that each boy acknowledges and they stand up, Baekhyun reluctantly letting go of Chanyeol's hand and sending the unconscious boy one last look before turning and heading towards the door out of the Hospital Wing. Jongdae follows, eyes on the floor, until they are both stood in the corridor. The mumbles and shouts of students eating in the Great Hall echo around the cold stone walls and swallow them. Jongdae reaches out and punches Baekhyun lightly in the shoulder, drawing the elder's attention from where he had been staring at his shoes.

"Cheer up, buddy. I'm sure he'll be right as rain tomorrow."

Baekhyun gives him a weak smile in return, nudging Jongdae back with a jab of his own. "Yeah. It's Chanyeol. He always bounces back soon enough."

With smiles that are only slightly forced, the two boys head to the Great Hall, ignoring the weight on their shoulders and the heavy thought that maybe, just this once, not everything is going to be okay.

~

Baekhyun picks pathetically at his potatoes, rolling them around on the plate with his fork, occasionally shovelling some in his mouth when someone looks at him in concern for too long. Across the table, Jongdae is faring no better, choosing to stack his carrots and broccoli into as tall a tower he can before the whole thing collapses and he tries again, rather than eating them. 

Baekhyun can feel Luhan's gaze on him from where the elder boy sits further down the table in conversation with Minseok and his other friends, and he can almost see the pitying expression he is sending the sixth year Gryffindors as if the elder is sat in front of him, so vivid that it makes Baekhyun's stomach churn, putting off his food even more. He pushes the plate and his fork away from him and rests his head on his folded arms, burying his face.

Chanyeol still hasn't woken up.

It's been a week since Baekhyun first realised something was wrong, a week since Chanyeol ended up in the Hospital Wing and the boy has made no signs of getting better. He doesn't seem to be getting worse either, which is probably the only reassuring part about the whole situation, but after days of nothingness, of seeing Chanyeol laying like a statue with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel, Baekhyun is starting to go a little bit insane.

On the second day of Chanyeol's hospitalisation, some healers from St Mungo's arrived. They were seasoned professionals, according to Miss Luna, having dealt with the most brutal and mysterious of maladies throughout their long years at the hospital, and they instantly took up the school nurse's case when she described what had befallen the student, drawn in by the peculiarity of such a condition. The weathered lines around their faces and air of confidence was comforting to the two Gryffindors as they were ushered out of the Hospital Wing with the promise that Chanyeol would be as 'peachy as a new-born's bottom' by the time they were done with him. 

They spent half the day observing the teenager, Baekhyun and Jongdae peering in through the Hospital Wing door that had been left ajar by mistake, watching as the healers poked and prodded at the boy with wands and fingers, taking his temperature and feeling his pulse while muttering amongst themselves. At first they had been excited, gripping each other tightly as the healers began casting complicated spells and charms, speaking in tongues neither had heard before as brilliant flashes of electric green and shocking deep reds filled the room, casting shadows on the walls around them. But this feeling soon faded into confusion and then worry when nothing seemed to be working, both the boys and healers slumping in exhaustion as the hours passed with no result. There had been a brief moment when a healer managed to make Chanyeol's eyelids twitch and a ripple of joy spread between the healers before melancholy settled in again when nothing followed, Chanyeol remaining in his comatose state. 

When half a day had passed - Baekhyun and Jongdae had skipped all their classes for the day - the healers took some drastic measures. One of the healers, the eldest, if his long, knee length grey beard was anything to go by, spoke in a hushed tones to his colleagues, waiting for them to all nod in agreement before producing a small blue bottle from his satchel. Baekhyun wanted to be a healer himself when he graduated, had read every healing magic book he could get his hands on since he decided on his future career, and his mouth dropped in a gasp when he recognised the potion the healer held in his spindly frail hands.

"Wiggenweld Potion. They think Chanyeol drank a Draught of Living Death!" 

Baekhyun hadn't even thought of that, and neither had Miss Luna apparently, who they saw pale at the sight of the bottle and turn her head away in shame, clearly guilty that she had not come to the same conclusion the healers did.

Jongdae had blanched, his grip on Baekhyun's arm tightening. "What, do they think someone _poisoned_ Chanyeol? That Chanyeol poisoned _himself_?" They had been taught to make a Draught of Living Death a few weeks before, and no one in the class could master it, not even the small Slytherin boy with glasses who always managed to make every single potion they were tasked with so far without fail. Baekhyun snorted, though the tone was more hysterical than mocking. "Chanyeol can be dumb, but he's not that dumb. And how would someone get hold of it anyway? It's a bitch to make and I doubt the professors have vials of it lying around for someone to take without being noticed. I doubt the professors would want to poison Chanyeol either, as annoying as he can be sometimes."

"So how do you think he would have taken it, if it is a Draught of Living Death?"

"I don't know.." Baekhyun starts, but stops when he sees the healer pouring little droplets of the potion onto a wiry finger, the green liquid dripping down onto his hand. The healer then brought his finger down to Chanyeol's lips, rubbing the liquid onto them before stepping back and sweeping the boy with a hopeful gaze. When nothing happened, he wiped his brow and leaned over Chanyeol, this time dripping the potion directly into the Gryffindor's mouth.

When nothing had happened again, the healer commanded his fellow wizards to sit the boy up and hold him straight, and Baekhyun had to slam his hand over Jongdae's mouth to stop him from calling out when the healer attempted to force the unconscious boy to drink the rest of potion before concluding it was far too dangerous, dropping him immediately when the teenager barely swallowed anything before choking and gasping for breath. 

Baekhyun had nightmares after seeing Chanyeol like that, head titled back and suffocating, sickly green fluid spluttering out of his mouth and throat while the hoard of healers surrounded him, casting a flurry spells to clear his airway before he stopped breathing altogether.

The healers left a few hours later, heads hanging low. With no way to medically wake him, Chanyeol remains in his hospital bed, curtains drawn around him to give him some privacy, separated from everyone and everything with no way to bring him back to consciousness.

Baekhyun and Jongdae have been instructed to keep the knowledge of Chanyeol's condition a secret, disclosing only to a small circle of friends that Chanyeol was sick and they were not to worry, keeping the reality of the situation hidden. They tell Luhan the truth, and the elder's look of sympathy is almost as painful as seeing Chanyeol lifeless in bed. While some of them, such as Luhan, go to see Chanyeol every now and then, leaving some flowers on the table beside the hospital bed, Baekhyun and Jongdae visit him every chance they get, choosing to spend their free time sat on Chanyeol's bed doing their homework or chatting until Miss Luna had to physically kick them out for disturbing her other patients. It doesn't feel right going about their normal schedules without Chanyeol's booming laughter, wide shark-toothed grin or erratic gangly limbs beside them at every moment of the day. 

"This sucks, dude."

Every day Chanyeol looks a little paler, feels a little colder, and Baekhyun can't help but feel completely and utterly helpless. He's had a week to think, a week to chew and savour and digest what has happened and the only conclusion he has is that this isn't enough. It's not enough to just let Chanyeol waste away in the Hospital Wing. It's not enough for him to be looked over once, twice, a third time, and then ignored. It's not enough for Baekhyun and Jongdae and all his other friends to just sit around and mope while an innocent person suffers alone. Call it the Gryffindor in him, but Baekhyun has never been one to lie down and take life as it comes.

After minutes of silence between them, Baekhyun lets out a frustrated groan that startles Jongdae out of concentration, causing him to send his vegetable tower tumbling and completely knock over his goblet of pumpkin juice with his elbow, drawing the attention of the students eating nearby. Baekhyun uncurls himself from his arms and slams his palms down onto the table before launching himself up from his seat, completely ignoring how Jongdae's juice is pooling under his hand from across the table.

"Baek?" Jongdae says weakly, watching in shock as Baekhyun climbs up onto the table, stomping across it before jumping down next to him. Without even looking at his friend, Baekhyun grabs Jongdae's sleeves and starts to march down the aisles between the long tables, hand balled into tight fists as he heads towards the entrance of the Great Hall. Jongdae trips over his robes as he stumbles up from the bench and almost lands on his face, scrambling to gather himself back up and chase after his friend. "Baek, wait!"

Baekhyun is halfway up the Grand Stairway before Jongdae catches up to him, grabbing onto the boy's elbow and tugging until the other stops storming and turns to face him. "Where are you going?" he pants, taking deep puffs of air to bring oxygen back into his lungs. Baekhyun tugs his arm out of Jongdae's grasp and returns to running up the stairs, determination and anger contorting his features.

"The library."

Jongdae jogs after him. "The library? Why?"

"Because I can't take this anymore! I'm fucking done, I'm done with just sitting around. If no one is going to help him, I'll do it my goddamn self."

Jongdae startles for a second, blinking up at his friend before grinning widely and chasing after him. "Like Hell you are. I'm coming with you!"

And so, Baekhyun and Jongdae decide to take matters into their own hands.

All the minutes and hours spent at Chanyeol's bedside are now spent in the library, nestled deep between shelves upon shelves of books and tomes and wrinkled rolls of parchment, searching through every section they can reach for anything they think will be of use. It's a shock for some to see the two Gryffindors so keenly examining the pages of memoirs and textbooks. Luhan almost drops his bag on poor Yixing's foot when the Seventh Year students wander in to find Baekhyun stood on Jongdae's shoulders, the boy on top struggling to reach a particular book on one of the uppermost shelves. 

After grilling them profusely for endangering themselves _you stupid idiots, you know that the book will just come down to you, you don't have to scale the bookcase, this is a magic school you morons, honestly_ , the elder students promise to help them whenever they have the time, relieving the boys of some stress for s short while. They understand when the Seventh Years can only help a few times. They have their own lives to worry about with N.E.W.Ts coming up.

It becomes obvious very soon that locating useful information is no easy task. They spend days and days searching, skipping meals and staying out past curfew, even skiving lessons, but can barely find anything worthwhile. None of their potions or charms textbooks, from their year and over, give them anything about sleeping besides that of a Draught of Living Death, which they know is not what is effecting Chanyeol. They harass Madam Victoria so much for ideas and suggestions that she bans them from the library for a day until they beg on hands and knees to let them back in. They even break out dictionaries from all sorts of languages, dead and alive, to translate the especially ancient books from writers long since gone from this earth, but find nothing. After almost a week of backbreaking work, the boys are well and truly exhausted.

"I don't understand," Baekhyun whines on their sixth evening of desperate reading, collapsing into the nearest chair and draping himself across the table, "we've searched through every single section relating to sleeping charms, curses and potions, practically exhausted the magical maladies section and even checked the areas on mythical creatures. What is it that we're missing?"

Jongdae shuts the book he was skimming through and rubs his eyes. He was starting to lose focus, all the words and pictures blurring into one black block on the page he was reading. He yawns and brings a hand up to scratch his head. "I feel like I've aged fifty years. I know more about the life cycle of a horklump than I do my own family." He rubs his eyes again. "Maybe I should leave school and become a horklump expert."

Baekhyun rolls his head to the side as he snorts. "I'll join you. We can get married and move to a farm in the middle of a forest somewhere and raise them together. A little horklump family. We'll be famous."

"Sure," Jongdae mumbles back, eyes drooping closed. "The horklumps will be happy to have a mother."

Baekhyun lifts his head. "Why am I the mother?"

"You have nicer hips than me."

Baekhyun thinks about it for a moment before nodding sagely in agreement and dropping his head back down to the table.

The clock on the wall says there are only five more minutes until dinner ends but Jongdae can't bring himself to care. His stomach is empty and growling at him to be filled but his temples are throbbing, his feet heavy, and all he wants to do is sleep. The piles and piles of books on the table are scary and ominous, towering over the exhausted boys as grim reminders of their failure to find anything worthwhile and useful. Every second they spend searching in vain is another second that Chanyeol spends in bed, alone and lost. Jongdae can't help but feel guilty for leaving him, even if it was to search for a cure for his condition. It doesn't help that their search has been fruitless, making the Gryffindors' guilt grow stronger every time they close a book, shaking their heads.

Jongdae stares at an unravelled scroll depicting sick and withered bodies (they were really desperate to find anything) and has to turn away when all he could imagine was Chanyeol's face in place of ink and parchment. His eyes drift around the shelves of books and tomes until they land on the crooked black metal gate right at the back of the library, concealed slightly by a thick and dusty curtain. He almost falls out of his chair.

"You okay there?"

Jongdae is practically vibrating. "Baekhyun, there's one section we haven't checked yet," he grins, almost manic in his sleep deprived state, pointing to the gate. Baekhyun follows his gaze and gasps before turning back to Jongdae with a look of pure horror.

"The Restricted Section, seriously, Jongdae?" he hisses in a shocked whisper. He squawks when Jongdae nods his head with far too much enthusiasm. "Oh fuck no. I love Chanyeol but I'm not getting expelled for his dumb ass."

"We won't get expelled!" Jongdae says, sitting up in his chair. "Well, not if we don't get caught." Baekhyun is staring at him like he's grown an extra head. "What? It's a great idea. Better than what we're doing right now anyway."

"Jongdae, we can't break into the goddamn Restricted Section! As much as I want to, it's pretty much impossible, like it's charmed and everything. I heard that one student tried to break in and ended up with massive boils all over their body." He emphasises his point by poking at his arms and cheeks. "I can't have boils! My face is too good for boils!"

Jongdae shrugs. "Then we won't break in."

Baekhyun raises his arms, slightly hysterical. "What will we do then? Convince someone to let us in without a single complaint?"

"Yeah."

"You can't be serious!" Baekhyun's voice is a little strained from lack of food and exhaustion. He rubs his eyes and peeks at Jongdae through his fingers. "There's no way they'll let us in there. You need to be a seventh year student to get permission anyway, which we are not, and even then you need to have a decent reason with a pristine reputation to even get close to being allowed," he says, sighing. He sends Jongdae a pointed look. "Who in hell would let us do that?"

Jongdae sighs, looking off to one of the shelves before his eyes light up suddenly and he turns to Baekhyun with a face glowing with brilliance. That was never a good sign.

"I know exactly the person."

~

Minseok doesn't even look up from writing his notes before saying "No," in a firm, crisp tone when Jongdae and Baekhyun approach him in the Ravenclaw common room. Jongdae doesn't even blink, waltzing up to the elder and plopping himself down in the empty seat beside him. "Oh come on, hyung. You haven't even heard what we were going to say!"

"If it's you I know I'm going to regret it so I've learned to just refuse before you even open your mouth," Minseok scoffs, eyes still on his work. After a few moments he blinks and looks up at the boys in front of him. "Wait, how did you even get in here?"

Jongdae preens and flicks his curly locks over his shoulder as if they extend past his shoulders. "You know, mother's always said I am a Gryffindor with a Ravenclaw's mind."

"Then my aunt must be a fool." He shoves Jongdae off from where the Gryffindor has curled himself around Minseok's shoulder and sends an unimpressed yet unsurprised look at the two boys. "You flirted with one of the second years, didn't you?"

"Third year, actually," Baekhyun chirps before turning over his shoulder to flash a wave and a wink at a group of young girls that have been staring at them for a while now, sending them into a chorus of giggles that makes Minseok wince. 

"I don't care how old they are. What do you want that's so important you couldn't wait before breaking into this sacred space of learning?"

"Am I not allowed to visit my cherished family members?" Jongdae sighs dramatically before draping himself backwards across the table Minseok is working on, covering all his notes and textbooks with his body and blinking up at the Ravenclaw with a seductive gaze. "Minseokkie, my most favourite and handsomest cousin, how are you this lovely afternoon? You're as ravishing as ever, have you been working out? You look great, the whole body-builder thing looks fabulous on you. You know, if we weren't related and I didn't have to fear Luhan violently castrating me with his delicate man hands, I'd happily court you myself, you sexy beast, you." 

Baekhyun is practically dissolving into laughter by the time Minseok shoves Jongdae off of the desk, watching with an amused smirk as his cousin rolls onto the ground with a squawk. "Please stop talking before I have to murder you." He loves his cousin, but he can be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

Jongdae leaps up from the floor and crouches on his knees, resting his head on the edge of the desk. "I will if you help us with something," he says sweetly, batting his eyelashes. When Minseok does nothing but stare back with an eyebrow raised, Jongdae throws himself to the floor at his feet again, arms raised in gospel towards the older boy.

"Oh, most hunkiest Minseok! Too long have I been tortured with the desperate need and desire to-"

"Yes, alright! Fine! I'll help you, just get off the floor and stop making a scene."

Jongdae jumps up instantly, brushing himself off and marching over to where Baekhyun is clinging onto the desk in pain from laughing so hard. "Awesome. Knew we could rely on you, hyung."

Minseok throws out a fist to thump Jongdae in the arm before turning to the desk, packing away his notes and textbooks into his bag. "So what is it you need me for?" he asks, gently lowering his ink pot into his bag so it doesn't spill all over his things. "If it's your Arithmancy homework again, you know Luhan is way better at it than me."

"We need you to break us into the Restricted Section."

Minseok practically chokes on his own tongue, dropping his ink pot into his bag with a crash, not even noticing it seep into all his books and notes like a thick black plague because he's staring at the two Gryffindors like they just slapped his mother and called her a whore. His eyes are wide like dinner plates, his eyebrows somewhere near his hairline and his mouth open in shock. Jongdae thinks he looks an awful lot like a stunned hare, but then Minseok's face shrinks into a scowl that makes the Gryffindor Sixth Years step back.

"My dorm room. Now."

They waste no time in scuttling away, shoving each other up the stairs to Minseok's dorm and collapsing through the door. They end up in a tangled heap on Minseok's bed, elbowing and poking each other. "Jongdae, this is so stupid, he's never going to help us," Baekhyun hisses as he jabs his friend in the ribs. Jongdae pokes him in the cheek in return.

"Yes he will. Minseok's too much of a big brother to not want to help. Just going to need some persuading, that's all."

"If he murders us I will kill you."

Jongdae is about to retort when Minseok steps through the door. The Ravenclaw walks over to his bed and drops his bag down beside it, removing his now soggy books and frowning at them before grabbing some tissues from the tissue box on his bedside table and spreading them out on the windowsill, laying his ink soaked books on top of them. Baekhyun and Jongdae watch him silently, sat up straight with their hands in their laps. When Minseok is satisfied that the books have been arranged adequately, he walks into the dorm bathroom and grabs a towel, wiping his hands clean. As he does so, he walks back into the dorm.

"This is about Chanyeol, isn't it?"

Baekhyun blinks at him. "How do you-"

"Luhan told me. I was wondering why he was always asleep whenever we went to visit him and Luhan seemed to know so I asked. He wouldn't tell me at first but it accidentally slipped out over lunch." He looks down at the Gryffindors. "Don't be mad at him, it was my fault for pestering him so much."

The Gryffindors aren't mad. They feel more guilty if anything, for keeping the truth of Chanyeol's illness a secret, even from people they trust the most. Jongdae blushes and rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah… Sorry for not telling you."

Minseok smiles. "It's cool. I understand. I'd want to keep it a secret too, if it was Luhan or Myeon or someone."

Baekhyun can't help but snort. If Junmyeon, the Head Boy, ever got sick to the same level as Chanyeol the whole school would collapse. 

"So you understand why we need to get into the Restricted Section?" Jongdae asks. "We really need your help, hyung."

Taking a seat on the bed beside his own, Minseok sighs, running a hand through his hair. "I understand. But I don't think it's a good idea." He sends a look towards Jongdae when the latter looks as if he's about to complain. "It's not easy to just break into the Restricted Section."

"But that's why we have a plan! You're a Seventh Year so you can just ask for a permission note from one of the professors, get the key from Madam Victoria and then give the key to us. You don't even have to do anything. We'll be doing all the risky stuff."

Minseok raises a brow at Baekhyun's idea. "What if it gets traced back to me? If you get caught they can find out who asked for it last and then I'll get dragged into it as well. I'm not getting expelled for you idiots."

"Then we'll make a copy," Jongdae says, "Yixing can make it for us." He pouts when Minseok raises a brow incredulously at him.

"Please, Minseok," Baekhyun whines, flopping sideways onto the bed and disturbing the pillows, ignoring how Minseok startles at the sight of his bed getting messed up. "We wouldn't be doing this if we weren't desperate. Do you have any idea how long we've spent in the library, slaving away for days on end, only to come up with nothing? I've spent more time in that room in the past week than I have in any library ever my entire life!"

Minseok scoffs, kicking out a leg to nudge the younger in the shin. "Luhan mentioned it." He inhales through his nose and rubs the back of his neck, drawing his legs up to cross them in front of him. "You guys are serious about this, huh?" The Ravenclaw can't help but smile when the younger boys nod their heads and Baekhyun sits up to wrap his arm around Jongdae's waist, resting his chin on his shoulder. 

"Chanyeol's in trouble, hyung. We can't just sit and do nothing. Everyone else has just given up. What kind of friends would we be if we did the same?"

It's quiet for a moment, the wind outside rattling the windows and the dripping of the sink in the bathroom the only noise that disturbs the air. Minseok stares at his lap, gaze a little distant, almost like he's going over all the things that could go wrong if he agrees to help them break about a third of the school rules and risk his education and future. For a second the Gryffindor's are certain he would say no, to tell them that he'd love to help but there's just too much at stake, but then the elder breaks out into a bashful laugh and gummy smile that has Jongdae and Baekhyun thinking otherwise.

"Goddamn Gryffindors," Minseok mumbles to himself before looking up at the two boys. "You win. I'll see what I can do." He has not time to react before Jongdae and Baekhyun launch themselves at him, curling their bodies around him and squeezing him between them in the tightest hug imaginable. Baekhyun is rubbing his cheek into Minseok's hair and Jongdae's hand is a little too high on his thigh to be comfortable but he knows that nothing he says will make them get off so he stays still and deals with all the affection until they release him, faces painted in identical grins.

"Minseok, you're the best!"

"Thank you so much, we owe you one!"

Minseok swats them away from him and stands up, straightening out his robes. "It's fine," he says, "just know that if I get into deep shit because of you two, I will not hesitate to beat you both to death with my broom." The pair salute, barking out a "yes, Sir!" before pulling the elder into a tight hug once again. 

They spend a bit longer in Minseok's room, catching up with the elder on everything they had missed during their long week in the library. After a while, their speech grows sloppy and starts to slur, eyes drooping and bodies hunching over, and it's not long before Minseok is grabbing a spare blanket from under his bed and draping it over them, both now curled up and sleeping on Minseok's bed, Baekhyun's head nestled in the curve of Jongdae's shoulder. They must be exhausted, Minseok thinks. A giant weight must have been lifted from their shoulders.

Minseok spares a glance at them before leaving the dorm. 

~

The corridors are dark and haunting as Baekhyun and Jongdae tread as quietly as they can towards the library entrance. They peer around every corner and keep as close to the walls as possible, the weight of the Restricted Section key heavy in the pocket of Jongdae's jeans. Minseok had slipped it to them during dinner, dropping it in his cousin's pocket as he reached across the table to grab some extra bread rolls. "You need to give it back to me as soon as you find what you're looking for," he whispered into Jongdae's ear. "I'll meet you outside the Ravenclaw common room at 8 am sharp, okay? Don't fuck up." 

Luhan had stared at them suspiciously, eyes narrowing when Jongdae turned to Baekhyun and whispered Minseok's message to him as soon as Minseok had turned away, but Minseok flashed him a gummy smile and asked if Luhan wanted anymore juice and the Seventh Year Gryffindor soon forgot about the cryptic interaction he had just witnessed. Minseok is helpful in more ways than one. No one can resist the charms of the Ravenclaw student.

Madam Victoria is nowhere in sight as Jongdae and Baekhyun push open the library doors and shuffle inside, closing them slowly behind them so as not to make any noise. They tip toe through the shelves and study tables, wands acting as torches in the inky black night.

"This is so creepy," Baekhyun mumbles, grimacing when he sees a large spider web hanging over them like a ghostly curtain. "I didn't think I could hate this place any more than I do already and yet-"

"Shush, you're making too much noise," Jongdae hisses, jabbing his friend in the arm with the tip of his wand. Baekhyun scoffs, jabbing him back.

"Says the one. You could deafen a dragon if you tried hard enough, loudmouth."

Jongdae is about to protest in his signature way, a whine prepped at the tip of his tongue, but the rusting black gate comes in to view and both boys halt in their tracks, stunned into silence.

It looks twice as sinister and ominous than it usually does. The area behind the gate seems darker than the rest of the library and even the air feels a lot colder, goose bumps breaking out across the boys' skin as they hesitantly step closer. All the stories of the area being haunted and the wicked and terrifying things that lie behind the protection of the gate seem to become a reality and for a moment both boys want more than anything to turn around and run back to their dorm, frightened as to what they will have to face.

But Chanyeol needs them.

Jongdae slips his hand into his pocket and fishes out the key. It's big and black, about the size of his palm, and it feels heavier in his hand than it did before. Jongdae convinces himself it's because he is tired and little bit nervous. He gives Baekhyun a crooked smile, feigning confidence as best he can, before stepping forward and slotting the key into the lock. It's stiff, old and crooked with age, and he has to force all his strength into turning it, but eventually it clicks loudly into place and the gate grinds open.

"Right," he says, pulling the key out and shoving it back into his pocket again, "let's see what we can find." Baekhyun nods at him, grinning, and they step into the Restricted Section.

Nothing, Jongdae thinks, could have prepared them for all the bizarre and creepy things they find as they search around the dark and damp shelves. At first, nothing seems to be that bad; dodgy potion books, scrolls describing plagues, a few novels on horcruxes that Jongdae has only read about in his History of Magic lessons ("You'd think they'd have these things removed after last time, don't you?") but never actually thought he'd see. Then he finds a books with awfully graphic drawings of rotting corpses, a list of charms and hexes that can be used to turn a person inside out, vials of potions that make him feel ill just by looking at them. He physically gags when he comes across a jar with a mummified grindylow inside and has to hold onto a nearby table to breathe away the nausea. Maybe coming here wasn't the best idea after all.

Jongdae is about to suggest they call it a night, desperate to get away from all the disturbing things he has experienced in the past hour, before he hears Baekhyun's voice.

"Hey, Jongdae. I think I found something."

Jongdae wheels around and walks over to where he heard his friend's voice. He finds him the far corner of the Restricted Section, stood beside a round table littered with stacks of books and rolls of moth eaten parchment. Baekhyun is hunched over a large leather bound book, his fingers scanning over the page as he reads through it before flicking over to the next. The book is old, very, very old, the spine rotting away and the fabric of the cover faded to almost nothing. Strangely enough, it is the only object on the table, including the table itself, that is not covered in a thick layer of dust, perhaps explaining why it caught Baekhyun's attention. As Baekhyun turns the page, the paper picks up some of the surrounding dust and sprinkles it into the air, floating up to Jongdae's face and making his nose itch. "What have you got?" he asks, trying not to sneeze.

"I was looking at this book, it's about forbidden potions from the middle ages," he says, flipping the pages over to show Jongdae what little there is left of the cover before turning back, "and I found this." He looks at Jongdae with a grin. 

"The Schneewitten Elixir," Baekhyun says, voice low in the quiet of the night. He points at a detailed drawing of a beautiful woman lying in a bed, surrounded by flowers, with Death curled around her like lovers in sleep. "Renders the drinker into a state of eternal rest, similar to that of a Draught of Living Death. The drinker appears to be in a death-like state, with a pallid, greyish complexion, skin that is cold to touch, a lack of any movement besides that of breathing, of which is deep and unnoticeable, and no response to outside stimulation. The drinker, while having not embraced death, appears to have done so."

Jongdae could cry. "That sounds exactly like Chanyeol!" he exclaims joyfully, gripping Baekhyun's arm and squeezing before a thought crosses his mind and he lets go, furrowing his brow. "Wait, did you say Schneewitten? Like Snow White?"

Confused, Baekhyun tilts his head. "I don't know what that is, but sure." His eyes narrow in questioning. "Why, is it important?"

Jongdae shrugs his shoulders. "Probably not." He turns back to the book and rubs his chin. "So what, you think Chanyeol was poisoned then?"

"It seems very likely. This is a very old potion, and it was pretty difficult to stumble across. If it is this, someone must have purposefully given it to him, there's no other explanation." 

"But who? And what for? He isn't the brightest bulb in the box but I can't think of a single person that would want to hurt him to the point of poisoning him. The guy is basically everyone's best friend. Wouldn't hurt a fly."

Letting out a deep sigh, Baekhyun rubs his eyes and leans back against the wall. "I don't know. I'll guess we'll have to find out."

"Does it say how to cure it?"

Baekhyun turns back to the book and flicks through the page, scanning over them with intense eyes. It's quiet for a moment, Jongdae resorting to clearing a small space on the table for him to sit on it, until Baekhyun snaps out an "oh crap."

Jongdae raises a brow at him. "Baekhyun?" The Gryffindor prefect looks a little grey.

"It says here, 'the effects of this particular potion cannot be ceased through any ordinary magical means. For only the strongest and most powerful of all magic that graces this earth is able to overcome this fearful elixir's grasp: true love. When the lips of the drinker's true love meets their own, all of this potion's effects shall become obsolete and the drinker is free to live again'."

What? "Excuse me?" Did Baekhyun just say what he thought he just said?

Baekhyun seems to turn even more grey. "The only way to save Chanyeol is by true love's kiss."

Jongdae slips off of the table. "You've got to be shitting me."

"I'm not," Baekhyun blanches, shoving the book in Jongdae's direction. "Read it here."

Still not quite believing his ears, Jongdae leans over the book and reads the section Baekhyun is pointing at. "Shit," he curses after reading over the page several times. Baekhyun is right.

_The only way to wake Chanyeol up is by true love's kiss._

"This just got a lot more difficult, didn't it?"

The laugh that Jongdae breathes out is dry and a little deranged. "You're telling me." He runs his hands through his hair. He was a little suspicious when he heard it was called the Schneewitten Elixir but now everything makes sense

"Seems a bit stupid though," he adds after a few minutes of tense silence. "A poison with an antidote of true love's kiss? What's the point?"

Baekhyun shrugs, turning to the book again. "It says here that it was originally created in medieval Germany when a father wanted to test the truth behind his a young man's professions of love to his daughter. He spiked her food with the elixir and told the suitor of her death. The suitor then kissed the daughter as a final act of his love. As it turns out, the suitor was not the daughter's true love and she remained asleep until she died a few weeks later, the father taking his own life out of guilt soon after her passing."

"Damn." This really wasn't good. "So… Chanyeol will die if we don't find his true love and get them to kiss him?"

It's a thought that leaves both boys suffocating in silence. The reality that Chanyeol could actually die is something they had managed to ignore thus far, but having said it out loud, it hangs off of them like cold metal weights. Jongdae's chest seems to clench slightly, and his throat tightens. Baekhyun closes his eyes and lets out a deep, hollow sigh.

"It seems so."

"How the hell are we supposed to-"

"What the hell are you doing in there?"

The boys turn their heads and see a flash of light coming from the library beyond the gate. They had been found. "Shit," Baekhyun growls, slamming the book closed and grabbing Jongdae by the arm before ducking down behind the table. "We have to get out of here." Abandoning the book on the table, they crawl over to the closest bookshelf to the gate and peer around it, quickly hiding behind the shelf when the light beams over them. "They're too close to the door, how are we going to get out? We need to distract them."

Jongdae suddenly grabs something from the shelf, a small, dirty bronze egg-like object that seems to steam between his fingers, and throws it over the gate, both boys wincing when they hear it smash a few metres away. The beam of light stops moving and then the sound of footsteps breaks the silence of the library. Jongdae flashes a grin at a nervous Baekhyun, joyous that his plan had worked. When the footsteps fade further away from the gate, the two boys stand up and hurry out of it as fast as they can.

They barely make it out of the library before they're stopped in their tracks by a blinding white light. The Gryffindors are flung off their feet and into the air, landing on their backs on the cold stone floor several metres away. Baekhyun reaches for his wand but that too ends up flying out of his hand, clattering loudly on the floor. A wand is shoved in their faces, the bright light making them wince away to shield their eyes. The person lowers their wand and Baekhyun and Jongdae are confronted with the disapproving eyes of none other than Kim Junmyeon, the Head Boy.

"Fuck."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: in Harry Potter canon, you don't need a key to get into the Restricted Section. You actually only need a permission note from a teacher, and once you hit sixth year you don't even need permission. I also doubt students can get expelled for entering the section without permission, but I decided to ignore that and create my own rules because why the hell not. The Restricted Section is also only separated from the rest of the library with a rope in the books, but I chose to follow the films and use a gate instead. Much more dramatic.
> 
> In case it isn't clear, Jongdae, Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Luhan are in Gryffindor, and Minseok and Junmyeon are in Ravenclaw. Yixing is in Hufflepuff, but he was only mentioned once or twice. He and the other members will pop up in the next few chapters (when I eventually have time to write them oops)
> 
> I hope you enjoy this mess lol. Thank you for reading! Feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://kokokysoo.tumblr.com/ask) if you have any questions or simply just want to scream about EXO~


	2. coming to me, shyly

The worst thing about being caught red handed by Kim Junmyeon, Baekhyun thinks, is that Junmyeon is actually a really nice person. He's honestly one of the nicest people Baekhyun has ever met. There are very few people that the prefect can say he respects and admires wholeheartedly, and the Seventh Year Ravenclaw is most certainly one of them.

He had first met the older student on his very first day of school. The young Gryffindor was five minutes late to his first lesson, wandering around maze-like corridors with Jongdae and Chanyeol in tow, all close to tears with little to no idea as to where they were supposed to go, when Junmyeon had stumbled upon them on his way to the Hospital Wing with a nosebleed. Even at the age of twelve Junmyeon was more than happy to guide the three lost little Gryffindors to the correct classroom, a smile on his face and spring in his step despite the amount of blood gushing from his face, and the boys only suffered a brief telling off when they arrived at their destination. Junmyeon's fond tutting and warm hand in Baekhyun's own is something he will probably never forget, and will certainly always be grateful for.

Since that day, Junmyeon has been a constant presence in Baekhyun's life. Whether it be for help with studying, advice on whatever it is that is troubling him, or simply just for company, Junmyeon has always been there whenever Baekhyun and his friends need him. They often joke that the older student is their mother away from home, something the Ravenclaw used to protest but has learned overtime just to accept that this was his legacy, but Baekhyun honestly does not know whether he would have survived at Hogwarts if Junmyeon was not there to guide him. When Junmyeon was named the new Head Boy, it was he, Chanyeol and Jongdae that cheered the loudest. And they will always be there for Junmyeon if they are needed as well.

However, at this very moment in time, Baekhyun is really very _not_ grateful for Junmyeon's presence in his life. Especially with the now Head Boy leading him and Jongdae back to their dorm with the promise of their demise when the sun rises.

"Hyung, this isn't fair!" Baekhyun whines loudly into the night. His voice bounces across the stone walls of the corridor and Junmyeon sends him an unimpressed look from beneath a curved eyebrow for being so loud. "We just wanted to read a few books, there's no need to take us to the Headmistress over this."

The scoff Junmyeon lets out grates at Baekhyun's temples. "You're a prefect, Baekhyun. You know the risks. Entering the Restricted Section without permission is grounds for extreme punishment, expulsion at worst. There are rules for a reason, you know."

"But hyung, how else were we supposed to find information to help Chanyeol? They would never have let us in there."

"You could have asked for special permission from the school board and they would have let you in whenever you liked." He tuts and rolls his eyes. "Seriously, Jongdae, stealing the key from another student and breaking in was not the only option."

So Junmyeon had bought the story of them stealing the key from Minseok. At least Jongdae's cousin wouldn't get into trouble. That was a positive, at least. "They would have taken one look at our school records and refused point blank," Baekhyun says, rubbing his temples.

"And whose fault is that?"

Baekhyun grumbles and closes his mouth.

They walk in silence, the sound of their footsteps on stone the only noise to guide them in their journey. The light from Junmyeon's wand wakes a few portraits as they walk by, but none of them snap or curse when they see that it is Junmyeon, instead mumbling a brief greeting that the Head Boy returns with a polite bow and pearly white smile. Baekhyun scoffs under his breath. If only they knew the truth about Junmyeon: that he's an ass-kissing sadist who loves sending students to their doom, even if they are his friends. Honestly, what happened to the sweet and gentle Junmyeon who guided lost first years to the correct classroom at his own expense? The Ravenclaw has always been a stickler for the rules, but ever since Junmyeon became Head Boy he's been such a stick in the mud. Baekhyun has never missed the old Junmyeon more than he does now.

They're a few corridors away from the Gryffindor Tower when Jongdae suddenly nudges Baekhyun in the ribs, making him gasp out loud in unexpected pain. Junmyeon looks over his shoulder, and Jongdae flashes the older boy an innocent smile until he turns back around. Baekhyun looks at Jongdae to see that innocent smile replaced with a smirk so mischievous that Baekhyun's fingers start almost start to tingle with excitement. Jongdae only gets that look when he has an idea.

The youngest Gryffindor clears his throat. "Really, hyung," he says, voice loud and clear in the cold night. "You would punish us for helping those in need? Chanyeol is wasting away in a hospital bed, sick and alone, probably scared out of his damn mind, and you're here trying to get the only people willing to do something about it expelled?"

Junmyeon tuts, clearly exhausted. "I don't make the rules, Jongdae."

Jongdae gives Baekhyun a look, and so he too coughs to get the Head Boy's attention. "Chanyeol is getting sicker every day," he states. "Kicking us out will only make him worse. You're basically part of the problem, hyung."

"I know what you two are doing and it's not going to work."

"You know, Baekhyun," Jongdae suddenly says, speaking as if his friend is on the other end of the corridor and not right beside him. "I swear our beloved Head Boy here has not even payed a visit to our dear and very diseased friend Chanyeol yet."

Junmyeon flinches slightly. Got him.

"Oh yeah! Jongdae, you're right. As Head Boy, surely he should be concerned as to the welfare of the student body, especially if one is taken ill with a mysterious and potentially incurable malady?"

"You would think so, wouldn't you." The boy sighs melodramatically, wiping fakes tears from his eyes. "Heartless, completely heartless."

Junmyeon looks at them over his shoulder, a blank and seemingly unaffected expression on his face, but Baekhyun can see by the vein on his forehead and twitching of his hands that Junmyeon is struggling to come up with an excuse. "I've… As Head Boy, I am awfully busy and have-"

"I wonder what the school would say if they knew that our most wonderful Head Boy cared not for the poor and pitiful?"

"I'm sure they would weep great tears, Baekhyun. Big, fat, wet, soppy tears."

Junmyeon shoves his hands into the pockets of his robes. "Really now, this is-"

"Kim Junmyeon? Hater of all those plagued with suffering? Actually the spawn of Satan? Eats babies for breakfast? The school would fall into chaos, Jongdae, chaos!"

"Alright, you two. Let's stop this-"

"And you know who would fall into despair the most at such terrible news?"

"No, Jongdae, who would?"

"The most beautiful and kind, loyal and patient, physically moulded by God himself, the sweet and innocent, Zhang Yixing."

Junmyeon stops walking so suddenly that Jongdae crashes right into his back, sending him stumbling backwards. Junmyeon spins around, and his eyes are round and wide in shock before they narrow dangerously, fixing the younger boys with a cursing glare. "You wouldn't."

Despite the strength of the Head Boy's stare, Jongdae is not moved. "Oh, I would," he says, lips curled into a mischievous smirk. "I wonder what Yixing would say if he knew Kim Junmyeon had not yet visited Chanyeol like he said he had?"

It doesn't take long for Junmyeon to crack under Jongdae's accusing gaze, his once narrowed eyes turning big and round as he flaps his arms like a distressed pigeon, shuffling on his feet. "Please don't tell him!" the Head Boy whines, "he's asked me to visit so many times and I know I promised I would but I've just been so busy and-"

"He would be so disappointed, wouldn't he?" Jongdae says, turning his head to look briefly at his friend, who nods their head slowly in feigned disappointment. "He'd do that thing with his face where he looks like an adorably upset sheep and say 'Junnie, you told me you had! Why did you lie to me?' and then probably cry or something."

Baekhyun wipes fake tears from under his eyes. "Poor, poor Yixing. Such a gentle soul," he says, clutching at his heart and swallowing his giggles. "And to think, our Head Boy would have caused such heartbreak!" Junmyeon looks like he's about to have an aneurism.

Jongdae suddenly turns to the distressed Head Boy, fixing him with a raised brow and curved smirk. "Maybe if we weren't expelled, we could keep the knowledge of such criminal deception a secret."

"That way Yixing's happiness will be protected forever!"

"And so will our lovely Head Boy's dignity."

"Or, you know, we could just tell Yixing the truth. After all, if we're expelled we will no longer have the need to keep such secrets safe, seeing as we will no longer be members of the student body-"

"Fine!" Junmyeon shouts. His sigh is long and deep and he hangs his head in defeat. He knows he is no match for the two Gryffindors. "You win. I won't tell the Headmistress about you breaking into the Restricted Section."

The boys cheer so loudly that five different portraits threaten to batter them. 

"But," Junmyeon says, after they have apologised to the angry paintings, "you're still having your prefect status revoked, Baekhyun." Baekhyun starts to whine, but the look Junmyeon sends him shuts him up immediately. "And both of you will still be having a detention for staying out past curfew. Otherwise there is no deal. I'm not that much of a pushover."

Jongdae and Baekhyun glance at each other. "I think we can agree to that," Jongdae says.

"Good. I'll sort out your detention tomorrow." He points towards the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Now can you please go back to your dorm? Some of us have things to do tomorrow."

Bowing at the waist with a foppish flurry of hand movements, Baekhyun and Jongdae bid goodnight to their beloved Head Boy, skipping down the corridor and disappearing into their common room, peals of laughter ringing in the night. 

Junmyeon watches them go with a sigh. Will he ever get some peace and quiet?

~

The detention, in all honesty, could be a lot worse. A lot, lot worse. If anything, Baekhyun is willing to thank the Head Boy for letting them off easy, even if his back hurts and he has splinters all over his fingers. He could be collecting bubotuber puss again, or shoeing Hippogriffs, or even spending an evening in the Forbidden Forest doing God knows what awful stuff. Picking off every single piece of chewing gum from under every single desk in the entire school with his bare hands is, in the grand scheme of things, not that bad.

It's really not that bad, he tells himself. Maybe if he repeats it enough times he might start to believe it.

Across the room, Jongdae flicks a bit of gum that is stuck to his finger into the bucket they were given to store all the removed pieces. "This sucks," he groans, wincing when his back cracks in several places as he reaches far under the desk for another blob of gum. "This really sucks."

"It does," Baekhyun agrees. He grimaces when his finger pokes at a particularly fresh ball in the centre of the table. "But at least we know what's happened to Chanyeol."

They had discussed it last night, tucked away in their beds, whispering to each other across the room so as not to wake their other roommates. If they really have found what is effecting Chanyeol, if this Schneewitten Elixir really is the real deal, then they are one step closer to bring Chanyeol back. The thought alone makes the tightness in Baekhyun's chest lessen considerably, and he feels that for the first time in weeks that he can breathe again. Chanyeol is getting worse every day, and they need to act fast before it's too late.

Jongdae manages to get the gum he was after and drops it into his bucket. "I don't know, Baekhyun. It all seems a little far-fetched." He grunts as he wipes his hands on his trousers. "True love's kiss? That's ridiculous."

"It is," Baekhyun says, wiping his finger on the rim of the bucket to get the gum off of his finger, "but it's all we have going for us at the moment." What else can they do? "I'd rather work with what we've got than do nothing at all."

The sigh Jongdae lets out is hollow and strained. Baekhyun knows how he feels. "I guess," he says after a moment of quiet. "It's going to be difficult though."

Checking under the desk to see that he's cleaned everything away, Baekhyun shuffles on his bottom over to the next one, pulling his bucket along with him. "We just need to find his true love," he grunts as he bends to feel under the desk. "Really, how hard could it be?"

On the other side of the room, Jongdae snorts. "Chanyeol knows an awful lot of people, and he's friends with most of them." There's a thud as he hits his elbow on one of the table legs. "It could be anyone."

Chanyeol is friends with an awful lot of people. He has a habit of getting along well with every person he meets. Baekhyun stops picking at some gum near his head to think. "He may get on with everyone but he's only really close with a few people. It's probably one of them."

There's a tap as Jongdae drops some gum in his bucket. "Well then it's obvious who it would be, isn't it."

"Is it?" Baekhyun pulls his head from under the table and peers over the top to see Jongdae staring to him over the top of his. "What?"

Jongdae does nothing but raise an eyebrow.

"What?" Baekhyun says incredulously. "I don't know who you're on about." Baekhyun sits up straighter to frown at his friend. "Who is it?" 

Jongdae flicks a piece of gum so hard across the room it hits Baekhyun in the forehead, bouncing off and rolling under the table. Baekhyun starts to splutter and squawk, ready to throw one back in revenge, but then Jongdae says something that throws him so much he bumps his head on the edge of the table in shock.

"It's you, you dumbass!" Jongdae shouts. "You must be Chanyeol's true love."

What? No, that's ridiculous. Rubbing the sore spot on his head, Baekhyun looks back over the table and meets Jongdae's unimpressed stare with one of his own. "Why the hell would it be me? Chanyeol doesn't love me." It makes no sense. Chanyeol is his friend.

Jongdae snorts as he rolls his eyes. "Could have fooled me." He goes back under his desk to pick at some gum. "You two did have that thing going on a while back."

Oh fuck. Not this again. "What thing?" he says, hiding his heated cheeks behind the table. 

Jongdae is not fooled. "You know, your thing." 

"I don't know what you're talking about."

A roll of the eyes, and Jongdae's raising his brow at him again. "Don't play dumb, Baekhyun. I walked in on you guys making out more times than I can count. You really weren't subtle."

Baekhyun curses Jongdae under his breath.

"We did not have a thing-"

"You did but whatever."

"-and even if we did, _which we didn't_ , what makes you think Chanyeol would be in love with me?" All they did was make out every now and then. Everything ended when they got caught up with exams, too stressed and too busy to meet in private, and they haven't done _those sorts of things_ since. There was nothing to suggest there was love involved, at least on Baekhyun's side. "It was ages ago!"

Snorting, Jongdae peers over the top of the table again. "Chanyeol still cries over that mouse his mum wouldn’t let him keep when he was like six."

"Your point being?"

"Come on, Baekhyun. It's worth a try at least."

"No. It's not going to work, there's no point."

"How do you know? Just because you don't love him doesn't mean he doesn't love you." He sighs, lifting a hand to brush his hair from his face. Baekhyun looks down at his lap, and there is some shuffling as Jongdae stands up and walks across the room to crouch down beside him. Baekhyun doesn't look at him.

"Look," Jongdae says softly, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I know it's a big thing to ask of you. And that it brings back a lot that you wanted to forget." A pause. "But Chanyeol's life is a risk here. If there is anything we can do, even if it makes us upset or uncomfortable, shouldn't we do it anyway? For Chanyeol's sake?"

Baekhyun knows Jongdae is right, of course he is right.

"But what if it works?"

It was so awkward after they stopped seeing each other, stopped stealing kisses in dark corners and empty rooms. Even though they ended on good terms, Chanyeol could barely look Baekhyun in the eye for months, too embarrassed to even talk to him, let alone be close to him as a friend. Baekhyun had been so afraid that he had lost his best friend. If Chanyeol really is in love with him, and Baekhyun cannot return his feelings, would he be able to go through that all over again?

Jongdae's palm is warm as he rubs his hand on the back of Baekhyun's neck. "Then we get our friend back," he says, so quiet it is almost a whisper.

It takes a minute or so for Baekhyun to think. "Okay, fine. I'll do it," he says, finally. Jongdae gives him a firm thump on the back and moves to rise, but Baekhyun suddenly throws out his hand and grabs him on the upper arm. "But only if you kiss him first." If he's going down, Jongdae is coming with him.

Jongdae blinks at him for a moment before grimacing. "That's gross," he cringes, dodging Baekhyun's hand as it goes to thump him in the stomach. "But if that's what it takes to get you to kiss him, hell, I'll strip off naked and give the bugger a lap dance."

Baekhyun laughs, but his mind is elsewhere.

~

It takes the boys three days to complete their detention. By the time it is over, neither can fully move their fingers, stiff and blistered from constantly picking and prodding at aged wood and hardened lumps of gum. Baekhyun doesn't think he's had as many splinters in his fingers in his entire life. Just the thought of seeing another piece of chewing gum makes him want to cry.

There are only two patients in the Hospital Wing when Baekhyun and Jongdae finally find the time to pay their friend a visit, Chanyeol being one of them. They are thankful - the least amount of people to witness this the better - and Miss Luna greets them with a sweet smile and a friendly wave as they make their way over to Chanyeol's bed. Baekhyun had been doing a good job at keeping himself calm, but all that flies out the window when he pulls back the curtain around Chanyeol's bed and moves to stand beside him. 

He's seen Chanyeol in this state many times, but this time is different.

Jongdae pulls the curtains closed and walks over to stand a little behind his friend, nudging him in the ribs. "Go on then," he prompts, pointing at Chanyeol's face. "Pucker up."

Baekhyun elbows him back. "You first, remember?" He steps back and pushes Jongdae forward. "Don't tell me you're going back on your word now?"

Swatting him away, Jongdae sighs from the bottom of his lungs and claps his hands together. Baekhyun walks around to stand on the other side of the bed. Taking a deep breath, Jongdae leans down and presses his lips against Chanyeol's own. 

It's a firm kiss, strong and resilient, and it lasts for longer than Baekhyun expected. After a few moments, Jongdae pulls back, opening his eyes slowly and taking a quick glance at the sleeping boy's face before drawing back completely. Baekhyun can see a hint of uncertainty in the boy's eyes, and both trail their gazes over to stare at the unconscious boy, searching for any kind of movement to suggest that Chanyeol was waking up.

Nothing happens.

The laugh that Jongdae lets out is short and strained. "Is it bad that I'm glad that didn't work?" he asks, awkwardly crooked yet somehow relieved smile on his face. "I have no idea what I would do if that actually worked."

Baekhyun snorts, and it sounds ugly in the quiet of the Hospital Wing. "Like he would ever be in love with your ugly ass."

"I'll have you know I'm goddamn irresistible."

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Baekhyun walks over to stand beside Chanyeol's bed. Chanyeol's skin is grey and he seems to blend into the monotone colours of the bedsheets and walls. 

"I guess it's my turn now," he says, and Jongdae only nods.

He feels like he is going to vomit as he steps forward to sit on the hospital bed. Honestly, this shouldn't be so hard, Baekhyun tells himself. He has kissed Chanyeol many times before. All he needs to do is a simple peck on the lips, nothing big or fancy, and everything will be back to normal. It doesn't matter how awkward or uncomfortable it will make things. Chanyeol is the only thing that matters.

_Chanyeol is the only thing that matters._

Pushing all his other thoughts from his mind, Baekhyun leans down, closes his eyes, and gently, ever so gently, kisses Chanyeol on the lips.

~

_Chanyeol is the only person in the dorm room when Baekhyun slams open the door and marches inside, hands clenched tightly into fists. He's lying on his bed, long legs dangling a little off the bottom of the bed, with arms outstretched above him and a magazine in hand. When Baekhyun storms in he almost drops it on his face, but after realising it was only his friend he shuffles up to sit against the headboard. Baekhyun drops his bag and coat onto the floor, purposefully creating as much noise and mess as he possibly can. Hopefully Jongdae will trip over something when he comes back, and then Baekhyun can laugh in his face._

_"You're back early," Chanyeol mumbles from beneath his magazine. "Where's Jongdae?" When he receives no answer, he peers over the top of the pages to see Baekhyun tearing off his clothes and flopping face first onto his bed in nothing but his boxers, mushing his face into his pillows. Baekhyun doesn't care that he's basically naked, and the autumn chill is prickling his skin and making it break out in little bumps. He's too exhausted and angry to deal with that right now. "What's up?"_

_"He ditched me."_

_Baekhyun's voice is muffled by the pillow, his words sounding like complete gibberish even to his own ears, but Chanyeol must have heard him loud and clear because he puts down his magazine and swings his legs to dangle them over the edge of the bed. "What, why?"_

_"Cause he's an asshole, that's why!" Baekhyun snaps, rolling over onto his back before growling deep in his throat. "I swear to Merlin I'm going to throttle him and feed his body to the giant squid."_

_Chanyeol laughs and it does not make him feel any better. "Come on, Baek, it can't have been that bad." If only he had been there, Baekhyun thinks. He had been so excited for this Hogsmeade trip, wanting to buy all the Halloween tricks and treats he could get his hands on, but Jongdae had to go and ruin it. It was bad enough that Chanyeol wasn't able to go with them, having had a detention for not completing his homework on time, but he thought it would be fine if Jongdae was there. Apparently not._

_"No. It was awful. I want to die."_

____

____

_"Don't be dumb. Tell me what happened."_

__

_Baekhyun rubs his eyes and groans again before sitting up and pulling himself around to face his friend. "I was waiting for him for ages, because of course he was almost fifteen minutes late," he says, and Chanyeol nods for him to continue, "and when he finally turned up he was with this random girl and asked if she could hang around with us for the day, and because I didn't want to look like a dick I said yes."_

__

_Chanyeol's brow furrows. "Was she not very nice or something?"_

__

_It is not the reaction Baekhyun wanted, and he scoffs as he flops down backwards onto the bed again, head and shoulders hanging off the edge of the bed. "I assume she's a wonderful person," he sighs, emphasising his words with a wave of his arms as Chanyeol probably can't see the upper half of his body well._

__

_"Assume?"_

__

_"She didn't take her tongue out of Jongdae's mouth for more than five minutes for me to find out."_

__

_Chanyeol's brows disappear somewhere near his hairline. "Ah," he says. "I can see why you'd want to leave."_

__

_"Yeah." He pulls himself back up again, rolling his eyes as he does so. "I wouldn't have minded if he wasn't completely ignoring me. Seriously, every time I turned to look at them they were eating each other's faces like their lives depended on it. I couldn't get a word in edgeways, I swear I only said about ten words the entire time I was with them." He shudders. "I've seen more of the inside of Jongdae's mouth than I've ever wanted to in my entire life."_

__

_Chanyeol grimaces and throws a hand out to swat in Baekhyun's direction. "That's really gross," he cringes, but his words are decorated with hints of laughter and a smile is starting to pull at his lips, and Baekhyun starts to feel a little better. He throws his arms up into the air as he continues._

__

_"And the noise! You know when you stir pasta? It was like that but wetter and a million times as loud. Just in my ear every second of the day."_

__

_More laughter. "Stop, that's disgusting!"_

__

_"And they kept feeling each other up! In public! They did things that would make my grandma spit feathers."_

__

_Still laughing, now deep and loud giggles that never fail to bring a smile to Baekhyun's face, Chanyeol grabs a pillow and throws it in Baekhyun's direction. Baekhyun raises his arms to block the attack but it still hits him in the chin. "You are vile," Chanyeol says, "I don't even want to think about that."_

__

_Baekhyun grabs his own pillow and launches it at his friend, cackling when it hits him in the stomach. "Honestly it was the worst few hours of my life. I just gave up and left." Chanyeol wraps his arms around Baekhyun's pillow and doesn't throw it back, but Baekhyun doesn't mind. He shuffles around on the bed and lays down on his back, sighing as his bones creak and crack. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were still there, playing tonsil tennis until the sun goes down."_

__

_"Oh well, at least you've escaped."_

__

_"I'm never going anywhere with Jongdae ever again."_

__

_"Understandable." Chanyeol picks up his magazine where he had thrown it carelessly onto his bedside table and starts to read it again, leaning back against the headboard. "He should have at least given you some warning."_

__

_"What, 'By the way, friend, I may ignore you completely for several hours straight because I'll be tongue deep in some random girl's face, but feel free to come along with us anyway, you may learn a thing or two'?"_

__

_Chanyeol peers over the top of his page and shrugs. "Sure, why not."_

__

_Baekhyun laughs but says nothing else. Honestly, he's just glad he has Chanyeol here to keep him company. Just talking to his friend has made him feel so much better about his shitty day. Maybe he won't feed Jongdae to the squid after all._

__

_The October wind bellows beyond the castle walls, and Baekhyun feels the chill on his bare skin as if he is outside again. Shivering slightly, he digs around in his bed covers for the jumper he wore yesterday to fight the cold and slips it on, sighing as heat starts to radiate back into his limbs. The collar hangs off his shoulders and exposes his collarbones to the elements, and he is almost certain this is actually one of Chanyeol's sweaters that has found its way into his possession, but he doubts Chanyeol minds. It's not like he's going to be giving it back anytime soon, what with him feeling warmer than he has all day wrapped in the soft fabric._

__

_He leans down to rummage under his bed for something to put on his lower half, tugging on a random pair of discarded joggers that may or may not be Jongdae's when he finds something suitable, and when he is fully dressed he buries himself under his duvet for extra warmth, wrapping himself up into as tight a cocoon he can make. Since when was October this cold? He's really never going out with Jongdae ever again. This was clearly his fault._

__

_He's just starting to feel his toes again when Chanyeol asks him a question._

__

_"So did you?"_

__

_Baekhyun turns his head to find the other boy staring at him. "Did I what?"_

__

_"Learn a thing or two. About kissing."_

__

_Oh. What a strange question. "I don't know," he says after thinking for a few moments. He hadn't really thought about it, if he was being honest, too busy being angry and irritated at his friend to focus on… that kind of stuff. He turns to look back at the ceiling. "That it's wet and gross and a great way to irritate every living thing in a ten metre radius?"_

__

_"I'm sure not all kissing is like that."_

__

_Baekhyun sighs. "I wouldn't know." It's not something he's very knowledgeable about._

__

_There is movement beside him and Baekhyun doesn't need to look to see that Chanyeol is still staring at him. "You've never kissed anyone before?" the other boy asks._

__

_"Not really. Have you?"_

__

_"A few times."_

__

_Baekhyun snorts and leans out of his cocoon to flick Chanyeol on the forehead. "Your mother doesn't count, Chanyeol."_

__

_"Shut up! I have kissed people."_

__

_"Like who?"_

__

_Chanyeol looks off to the side as he thinks for a moment. He fiddles with his fingers. A nervous habit. "There was this girl at my church. She was kind of cute." A pause. "And this boy in my village."_

__

_"Oh." Baekhyun has always known Chanyeol liked boys in that way, even if it was never brought up. He rolls over to face his friend and smiles at him, reassuring. "That's cool," he says. "Was it nice?"_

__

_"Yeah, I guess."_

__

_The room goes quiet. Baekhyun doesn't know if the conversation has ended or not, so he just stays put, spread out across his bed, listening to the October wind rattling the windows and the sound of Chanyeol's breathing. It's a few minutes before anyone speaks again._

__

_"Are you curious?"_

__

_Baekhyun turns his head to look at the other boy. Chanyeol isn't looking at him anymore, choosing to look down at his hands and pick at his nails "About what?" Baekhyun asks._

__

_"About what kissing is like."_

__

_Baekhyun doesn't know why his cheeks and neck feel so warm. "I don't know," he mumbles as he turns to look away and hide his face. "It's bound to happen sooner or later, right?" At least he hopes so._

__

_"Yeah. Probably."_

__

_More silence. And then, "do you want to try?"_

__

_What? Did Baekhyun hear him right? He rolls over to the side. Chanyeol still isn't looking at him. "What?"_

__

_"Do you want to try kissing?"_

__

_Since when did his throat get so dry? Baekhyun coughs, and shifts a little on the bed. "With who?"_

__

_Chanyeol shrugs his shoulders. "You know… with me."_

__

_The heat in Baekhyun's face reaches unbearable levels, so much so that he feels sweat dripping down his temples. He wipes at the sides of his head and sits up completely, kicking the duvet off of his body and shivering when cold air hits him. Chanyeol wants to kiss him? His heart skips nervously. "You want to kiss me."_

__

_Chanyeol copies Baekhyun and sits up as well. Like this, Baekhyun can see his ears are an aggressive shade of red, blush trailing all the way down to his neck. "If you want to. You seem curious."_

__

_Baekhyun is curious, if he's being honest with himself. Especially now that he knows he's the only person in his friendship group to have never been kissed before. But first kisses are supposed to be big and important, something special between two people that like each other, right? Baekhyun doesn't like Chanyeol that way. What if things get weird? "I don't know, Chanyeol. We're friends."_

__

_"You don't have to be in love with someone to kiss them," Chanyeol mumbles at his lap. He still won't look at Baekhyun. "And it wouldn't mean anything. Just us seeing what all the fuss is about."_

__

_You already know what the fuss is about, Baekhyun wants to say. "I don't know," he says instead._

__

_There is silence, broken a few seconds later when Chanyeol sighs, hollow. "It's cool," he says. "It was just a suggestion." The boy then smiles, a small twitch at the corners of his lips that Baekhyun assumes is supposed to be casual but looks a lot more like awkward than is comfortable, before lying back down and rolling over so his back is facing Baekhyun. "Dinner is soon, anyway." The wind rattles against the windows. "I wonder if Jongdae will be there."_

__

_The dorm room is silent for a while. Baekhyun barely moves, choosing to look down at his lap and poke at his bare feet. Would it… would it be so bad to kiss Chanyeol? Sure they're friends, but as Chanyeol said, it wouldn't mean anything. It's just a kiss, and if Baekhyun wasn't curious before, he certainly is now. One kiss won't hurt. No one has to know._

__

_He shuffles around on his bed, gathering the courage to speak, before he takes a deep breath and takes the leap._

__

_"Chanyeol?" The other boy hums, but doesn't turn to face him. "I don't mind. Kissing, I mean." Baekhyun rubs the back of his neck. He can't believe he's actually considering this. "We can try it, if you want."_

__

_It is only then that Chanyeol rolls over. He fixes his friend with a wide eyed stare. "Really?"_

__

_"Yeah. As long as you don't tell anyone. Not even Jongdae."_

__

_Sitting up, Chanyeol moves so that he is sat cross legged on his bed. There is a brilliantly wide smile on his face. "I won't. And you too."_

__

_That's reassuring at least. "Okay," Baekhyun says, swallowing a lump in his throat. "How do you want to do this?"_

__

_Chanyeol looks around, scanning the room for places they can go. He eventually pats the space in from of him. "Sit here," he says, and Baekhyun moves across the room to sit cross legged on Chanyeol's bed, a little uncertain. Chanyeol shuffles forwards a little, pressing their knees together._

__

_Neither boy moves for about a minute. Baekhyun's foot is starting to go numb and he looks down, opening his mouth to say that maybe this isn't such a good idea, when he feels fingers on his chin, tipping his head up. Baekhyun closes his eyes as Chanyeol leans forward, and then something soft and a little bit wet is pressing gently against his lips._

__

_It's a little messy at first. Neither boy quite knows what they're doing, Chanyeol having not kissed someone in a while and Baekhyun a complete stranger to this new and unfamiliar feeling, but after a few tries, a few tilts of the head and more confident advances, they settle into a slow but steady rhythm, knees and teeth no longer bumping together, and oh, is this what it felt like when Jongdae was with that girl? He finds himself leaning forward, hands moving from his lap to graze Chanyeol's thighs as he silently presses against Chanyeol's lips. Chanyeol's other hand, the one not rubbing soothingly under Baekhyun's chin, comes up to gently caress the other boy's cheek and Baekhyun has to stop for a second because he can't breathe._

__

_"Oh," he gasps, and then he leans back in._

__

_Chanyeol tastes like the dark cherry and chocolate pie they must have served at lunch that day. Baekhyun sighs into his mouth and slowly releases the tension in his shoulders, reaching forward to grab onto the other boy's arms. Chanyeol's lips are a little chapped, roughened by the sudden change in weather and the constant nibbling of his teeth, but somehow still soft as they move against Baekhyun's own. "I can see why Jongdae enjoys it so much," he whispers against Chanyeol's mouth. The other boy smiles and takes him deeper._

_How long they were sat there on Chanyeol's bed, kissing and stealing touches as the wind shook the walls around them, Baekhyun does not know. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps even an hour. Chanyeol suddenly pulls away from him, resting his forehead against Baekhyun's own as they pant for breath. "Why did you stop?" he asks._

_"We're going to be late for dinner."_

_Oh. Peering around the boy in front of him, Baekhyun takes a peak at the clock on the wall. Dinner does indeed start in a few minutes. Trust Chanyeol to know that without even seeing the time himself._

_Pulling away, Baekhyun climbs off the bed and stretches, back facing the other boy. The realisation of what they just did hits him and he almost stubs his toe as he shuffles over to his bed. Did they actually just do that? Did he really just make out with Chanyeol, his best friend? His mouth feels wet and coated in spit, damning proof of his actions only moments ago, and he brings a hand up to wipe away the moisture as he bends down to pick up a pair of shoes by his bed, slipping them on. He hears movement behind him, most likely Chanyeol putting on his own shoes, but he doesn't turn around, instead walking over to the door. He doesn't think he can face Chanyeol right now, as embarrassed as he is. He can't believe he just did that! What if someone had walked in on them? He would never live it down!_

_He is just opening the door when Chanyeol calls out his name. He turns around, hand still on the handle, and startles a little when he sees how close Chanyeol is to him._

_Chanyeol places one more peck on his lips, light and soft, and leaves first. Baekhyun ignores the spinning feeling in his stomach (and somewhere a little lower) and follows after him._

~

After a few moments, Baekhyun pulls away. Feeling Jongdae shuffle forward behind him, Baekhyun steps back, and the two friends stare at the boy in the bed, looking for any signs of movement, anything that would tell them Chanyeol was back to how he should be.

Nothing happens.

Chanyeol does not wake up.

~

It's a mild weekend day, cloudy and a little windy, and Baekhyun tugs his jacket a little tighter around him as he sits in the quidditch pitch stands, watching with vague interest as the Gryffindor team warm up for practise. Each member takes it in turns to fly from one end of the pitch to the other in laps of ten, Luhan hovering near the hoops with a stopwatch in hand. The Captain will bark out praise or criticism every now and then, urging his team to be as fast as possible and improve their flight time by the next game. Gryffindor have been unbeatable so far this year, and Luhan will stop at nothing to make sure they succeed in winning the cup, having been brutally beaten by Ravenclaw the year before. If Minseok is a harsh Captain, Luhan is positively ruthless.

Jongdae touches down from having finished his laps, lifting his shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow. As the last member of the team to be timed, Luhan lands next to him and tells him his time, and although Baekhyun is too far away to hear what they are saying, Jongdae's face lights up and Luhan pats him on the back. He must have beaten his previous record. The two teammates spare a few words before Luhan gives the younger student a final thump on the back and walks over to another teammate.

The smile that was on Jongdae's face fades soon after Luhan's back is turned. He looks tired, Baekhyun thinks, and not because he had just been flying around in circles.

Ever since their failed attempt to wake Chanyeol the week before, Baekhyun and Jongdae have not been the same. Well, they haven't quite been themselves anyway, what with Chanyeol being so sick, but it is more noticeable now than ever. Mainly because the once inseparable duo have not spoken more than three sentences to each other in the days that have passed. Baekhyun has taken to searching the library again, scouring the shelves for anything they may have missed the first time, while Jongdae has thrown himself into quidditch, the shadow of his body pressed firmly against his broom as he flies around the quidditch pitch at top speed becoming a common sight to those who reside in the castle. It was days before Baekhyun was sick of keeping his thoughts to himself and wandered over to the quidditch stands to catch a glimpse of the boy he didn't realise he missed so much until he saw him, high up in the sky and drenched in sweat.

Sat alone in the stands as he watches Jongdae practise with his teammates, Baekhyun sighs, chest tight. Will anything be the same as it was before?

He's staring at nothing, lost in his thoughts, when suddenly he hears some humming coming from a few metres away. Baekhyun turns his head to see someone crouched on all fours, peering under the seats, butt in the air. Their hips wiggle from side to side as they crawl along the floor, reaching out with long arms to feel around under the seats, and Baekhyun watches with amusement as the person bumps their head on one of the wooden beams, letting out a squeaky "ouch," and rubbing the sore spot as they continue to shuffle about on their knees.

"Here, kitty," the Gryffindor makes out through the noise on the pitch and bumping of limbs on wood. "Who's a good little kitty cat?"

Baekhyun would know that voice anywhere. He feels his lips tug from a frown into a smile when the student stands up and Baekhyun can finally see his face, confirming his guess. "Yixing!" he calls out, and the older student spins around in a circle in an attempt to locate whoever said his name, looking a little bit like a stumbling lamb, until his gaze settles on the Gryffindor.

"Hello, Baekhyun!" Yixing smiles cheerfully. He lifts a hand in a small wave, which Baekhyun returns with equal fervour, before wandering over. "How are you today?"

"I'm good," Baekhyun lies. He pats the space next to him. "Would you like to sit down? You looked puffed out."

Yixing's cheeks are the kind of red you only get from exertion and there is sweat beading from his brow, and he looks beyond relieved at being able to sit down and take a break from whatever it was he was doing. He mumbles out a sweet "thank you," before plopping himself down besides Baekhyun and leaning his head on the younger's shoulder. "I'm very tired."

Despite not being on the quidditch team himself, Baekhyun knows all the houses' practise routines off by heart. At first it was to help his friends spy on the other teams so they could gain the upper hand in matches, but it had its practical uses when Chanyeol kept forgetting when practise sessions were, resulting in Luhan threatening to kick him off the team for being late all the time, no matter how good of a beater he is. As such he knows that the next Hufflepuff practise session is in two days' time. Yixing is too good of a person to spy on his fellow students (Jongdae says that Baekhyun's rather high opinion of Yixing is a little optimistic) so what is the Hufflepuff chaser doing crawling around the stands? He asks him, and Yixing lets out a cute embarrassed laugh, dimples appearing on his cheeks as he rubs the back of his neck.

"Luhan's cat is missing. I'm helping him find her." He looks around the stands for a moment, eyes squinting. "You haven't seen her, have you?"

Luhan's cat, a pampered Li Hua Mao cat called Bao, seems to despise Baekhyun with all its furry being and stays away from him as much as physically possible, so no, he has not seen her. He tells Yixing exactly that and the older student lets out a melancholic sigh, puffing out his cheeks and pouting. "Oh well, she must be somewhere else." He turns to Baekhyun with a dimpled smile. "What are you doing out here?"

"Just watching. I have nothing better to do."

Baekhyun can think of about seven different things he could be doing that are leagues better than watching one of his best friends hit a psychotic ball around a field for a couple of hours, but he doesn't feel like doing any of those things at the moment. These days, he doesn't feel like doing anything besides staying in bed and sleeping. If he could sleep at all. The bruising under his eyes grows darker as the days pass.

Yixing hums and says nothing.

There's something about the Hufflepuff that makes Baekhyun feel relaxed whenever he is around, a naturally calming presence that reminds Baekhyun of home. He feels the throbbing in his temples start to fade as Yixing starts to hum a tune under his breath, and his eyes start to droop in time with the steady beat Yixing starts to tap on the back of the bench in from of them, rhythm matching his vocal melody. Yixing smells earthy and a little sweet, like honeysuckle perhaps, and Baekhyun doesn't know when he finally falls asleep, falling deep into warmth and darkness, but when he wakes with his head nestled in Yixing's lap the quidditch pitch is empty and the sky is a little darker than before.

"Shit," he mumbles, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Sorry about that." How could he just fall asleep on Yixing's lap? The Hufflepuff probably had loads of things to do today and Baekhyun just wasted his time. What an idiot.

"Not at all," Yixing says. He's smiling at Baekhyun with so much warmth, dimples in his cheeks, that Baekhyun feels a little less guilty for using him as a pillow and most likely giving him a dead leg. "Do you feel better?"

Baekhyun doesn't think he's ever felt as good as he does now, and he tells the Hufflepuff so. His tummy bubbles at Yixing's laugh. "That's good," Yixing says. He lifts a hand to smooth out Baekhyun's hair where it is no doubt sticking up in random places like a porcupine. "You slept for a long time. Have you not been sleeping well?"

The pulse in Baekhyun's temples starts to beat again. "No," he admits after a few seconds. "Not really. Not since…"

Yixing's smile falters a little, and he touches his hand on Baekhyun's arm. "How is he?"

Baekhyun huffs out a lungful of air. "He's alright, I guess," he says. If he was being honest he would say he has no idea. He hasn't been to see his friend at all since his attempt to wake him. Yixing nods slowly, like he knows, and draws his hand away to brush a few strands of hair away from his face where they have been ruffled by the wind.

"I haven't visited in a while. Would you like to come with me?"

Chewing his lip, Baekhyun sighs. "Yes please." He has to face his issues at some point. Might as well be with company.

They take the longest way to the Hospital Wing, so Yixing can walk off his dead legs. The relatively drab weather means many students are inside, filing up the corridors in groups and making it a little difficult to squeeze past as they spill into all areas of the corridor. Yixing's hand finds its way into Baekhyun's when they almost separate after a large group of boys barrel past them and knock the elder in the shoulder, and neither one lets go as they make their way towards their destination, even as the amount of people in the corridors thin and grow quieter the closer they get. Yixing's hand is warm and inviting, and Baekhyun only lets go to push open the door. He ignores how cold his hand feels.

As they enter the Hospital Wing, Baekhyun's stomach starts to churn. It's been over a week since he was last here. Even though Chanyeol is still asleep he doesn't know if he can face him. Why is he so nervous? And why does his chest hurt so much? The only thing keeping him there is the feeling of Yixing stood beside him, heat sinking into his skin as they make their way over to the bed on the far side of the room.

But it seems they are not the only people to have decided to visit that day.

There's someone stood beside Chanyeol's bed. The boy's hand is touching Chanyeol's lower arm, just above his wrist, and his face is almost painfully tender as they trail their eyes over the plains of Chanyeol's face. It's an awfully honest sight, and for a moment Baekhyun feels like he's witnessing something private. He almost turns around to head out of the Hospital Wing, not wanting to interrupt before remembering that Chanyeol is his friend and he has every right to be there.

But then the boy lifts his head, and Baekhyun stutters in his steps. He recognises him as the quiet kid at the back of his potions class, the one that has made every single potion they are tasked with successfully with little to no mistakes at all.

"Kyungsoo?"

The Slytherin boy snaps his head in the direction of his name and stills. He pulls his hand back and clears his throat, stepping away from the bed, face now blank. "Hi, Baekhyun," he says while adjusting his glasses to fit better on his nose.

"Hi," Baekhyun says, walking over to stand on the other side of Chanyeol. "What are you doing here?" Kyungsoo and Chanyeol aren't that close. They aren't enemies or anything, just classmates, acquaintances at most. Baekhyun has only ever seen them speak to each other in class, when Kyungsoo occasionally asks the taller to get something for him from the top shelves in because the Slytherin boy can't reach. Of all people to want to visit Chanyeol, he didn't expect Kyungsoo to be one of them.

"I came to deliver these."

It's then that Baekhyun notices the bouquet of flowers in Kyungsoo's hand. Tulips, red, yellow, pink, intertwined with pure white hyacinth. They are bright and sunny against the drab backdrop of the Hospital Wing's cream and grey walls, and Baekhyun is thankful for the change in atmosphere, even if Kyungsoo looks like he has been caught with his hand in a cookie jar. "Who are they from?" he asks.

Kyungsoo blinks at him for a moment before replying. "Kim Jongin."

Kim Jongin is Gryffindor's seeker, and thus on the same team as Chanyeol and Jongdae. Baekhyun has met him a few times, and even if he hadn't he would still know exactly who the young Gryffindor is. As a seeker he is naturally popular (it comes with the job) but Jongin is probably the single most loved being in the entire school. And it's understandable, considering that Jongin is not only incredibly handsome for a fifteen year old but also wonderfully kind and considerate. Baekhyun isn't all too surprised that Jongin would send Chanyeol flowers (the boy is just too darn nice) but he is a little curious as to why the seeker hasn't come to visit Chanyeol himself. After all, they are on the same quidditch team and are good friends, as far as Baekhyun is aware. He asks Kyungsoo, and the Slytherin blinks at him.

"He's at quidditch practise."

"That ended ages ago."

Kyungsoo shrugs. "Maybe he's busy."

There's something awfully peculiar about Kyungsoo, Baekhyun thinks. He's not quite sure what it is. Maybe it's the boy's stance, arms by his side and chest out slightly, defensive, or the way his eyes keep flicking over to the door. Or maybe it's because his face is unreadable, an aggressive contrast to the soft roundness of his features. Whatever it is, Baekhyun finds himself staring with eyes narrowed slightly, scrutinising, head tipped to the side. Kyungsoo ignores him and turns to place the bouquet on Chanyeol's nightstand beside the vase already filled with wilting flowers.

"I'll see you in class," he says, sending a polite nod to Yixing before walking out of the room.

Yixing breaks the tense silence left behind with a pleasant smile. "He seems nice." Baekhyun, who had been watching the Slytherin boy as he made his way down the Hospital Wing and out of the door, turns to see the Hufflepuff moving over to the colourful flowers and picking them up delicately, inspecting them before putting them down again. 

"I guess," Baekhyun says.

Removing the wilted flowers from the vase, Yixing takes his wand and waves it, muttering something under his breath. "Is he a friend?" he asks between words. Baekhyun suspects he's removing the dirty water from within the vase and refilling it, and his guess is confirmed when fresh, clean water starts to pour from the tip of Yixing's wand. Yixing is known for his expertise in Herbology, so Baekhyun isn't surprised he knows what to do to. "We share some classes," he says in reply, taking a seat at the edge of Chanyeol's bed as he watches Yixing work.

When the vase is filled, Yixing picks up the tulips again. "These are beautiful flowers," he sighs wistfully. "It's nice for Jongin to send them."

"I didn't know they were that close, Jongin and Chanyeol." They say hi to each other in the corridors if they happen to pass by and Chanyeol sometimes talks about something cool Jongin did during practise, but other than that they don't interact much beyond the quidditch pitch, in Baekhyun's knowledge. "I know they're good friends, but they don't strike me as 'flowers' close."

Yixing laughs, light and warm, melodic. "This is Jongin," he says, moving to stand beside Chanyeol's head. "He and Chanyeol are quite close, from what I can tell." He tilts his head in thought. "You know, he even protested Chanyeol being replaced on the team."

Baekhyun remembers that day well, when Luhan had announced he was planning to run try-outs to fill Chanyeol's position, on Professor Liu's advice. It was going to be difficult to win a match without a full team, and Jongdae couldn't defend the entire team as beater on his own. It was in his favour, but Jongdae had been so mad he almost snapped his broom, furious at even the thought of Chanyeol being removed from the team. Baekhyun had to deal with him ranting and raving all day about how Luhan "doesn't care! Chanyeol isn't dead, he's not some tool to be replaced! I can't work with a complete stranger, I'd rather do everything on my own. Luhan is Chanyeol's friend, he should understand!" It took hours of hushing and several portions of treacle tart for him to eventually calm down.

They did manage to replace Chanyeol in the end, even if a quarter of the team refused to talk to Luhan when it happened. The kid is nice and plays well, according to Jongdae, but it's just not the same. "It's not like they could leave the position open," Baekhyun reasons, ignoring the voice in his head that questions how Yixing knew such a thing anyway. "Especially with the next match coming soon."

"I know. But Jongin wasn't very happy." Yixing starts to play with Chanyeol's hair, running the unwashed strands through his hair before plaiting it into tiny braids. Chanyeol's hair has grown a lot in the past month. "He's been looking pretty rough ever since Chanyeol stopped turning up for practise."

Something seems to click into place in Baekhyun's head. A spark, small and yet somehow so bright, flickers in his mind. Baekhyun blinks up at Yixing, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Has he?" he asks, slowly, inquisitive.

Yixing doesn't notice the change in Baekhyun's tone. He hums in affirmation. "Always moping around and sulking. Luhan is worried that he won't play well at the next match because Chanyeol might not be there." He sighs as his face moulds into a small pitying frown. "Jongin misses Chanyeol a lot."

There it is again, that spark. Baekhyun is sure he is grinning now. "Oh. That's something."

"I don't think I've ever seen Jongin so down. Chanyeol must mean a lot to him."

It hits Baekhyun so hard that he almost falls off the bed. "Fuck a duck," he gasps so loudly that Yixing lets out a started yelp and pulls a few of Chanyeol's hairs out by accident. Baekhyun launches himself up from the bed and takes his face in his hands, squishing his cheeks as he hops about in excitement. "I've done it!"

"Baekhyun?" Yixing asks weakly, and he opens his mouth to speak again but is cut off with a slightly pained grunt as Baekhyun launches himself at the older and tackles him into a hug. Baekhyun is buzzing, a complete turnaround from his melancholic mood that morning, and Yixing doesn't know why but he pats Baekhyun's back as the Gryffindor squeezes him tighter.

"Yixing hyung," Baekhyun beams, drawing back a little and taking the elder's face in his hands before placing two fat, wet kisses on his cheeks, right on his dimples. "You are amazing!"

"Thank you?" Yixing wipes the wetness from his face when Baekhyun finally lets him go, smiling at the sudden affection but overall confused. "What did I say?" Baekhyun plants one more kiss on Yixing's forehead before grabbing his bag and taking off in a run down the Hospital Wing. "Where are you going?" Yixing calls to him, and Baekhyun looks over his shoulder, a musical laugh billowing from a wide rectangular grin.

"I have to get Jongdae!" he shouts. "I think Jongin is Chanyeol's true love!"

~

It is honestly not that difficult to find Jongin. It's probably the easiest thing Baekhyun and Jongdae have done all month. The boy is constantly surrounded by swarms of students, usually star struck teenage girls, all desperate to get a glimpse of the handsome Gryffindor seeker and his friends. All they had to do was ask a group of students if they knew where they could find him and they were heading in the direction in which Jongin had last been seen in five minutes flat.

They find him hidden in the far end of the school, huddled on the first few steps that lead to the boathouse with three other boys, all Slytherins besides himself. Baekhyun doesn't know two of them, a skinny blonde boy with sharp angled brows and another, more muscular boy with dark eyes, but he does recognise the familiar thick black glasses that belong to Kyungsoo, which is unexpected because he didn't even know they were aware of each other's existence, let alone that they were friends. The four boys have their books and quills out, most likely studying (or trying to), and Baekhyun isn't surprised they chose to hang out here rather than in the library or an empty classroom, what with them being stalked all the time. Even now there is a pack of Second Year girls failing to make themselves invisible behind a nearby tree. They stop giggling as Baekhyun and Jongdae pass, watching them with suspicious eyes. 

"I really hope he's up for it," Baekhyun mumbles, keeping his voice low so that the girls can't hear him. "It's not really something people usually ask for."

"If you are right about him then it shouldn't be a problem." Jongdae takes a moment to observe the students in the trees. "To be honest, I think it's them we have to worry about, not Jongin."

When they are stood beside the fifteen year old, Jongdae clears his throat. "Jongin?" he says, and the younger Gryffindor stops speaking to the blonde boy next to him to turn his head and look up at the sound of his name. His face blooms into a handsome smile that makes Jongdae want to smile back. Jongin just seems to have that effect on people.

"Oh, hey, Jongdae!" he says, but his smile falters when a chorus of giggles and lovesick sighs break out behind them. One of his friends, the boy with the dark eyes, glares at the girls while the blonde boy rolls his eyes, but Jongin just smiles. He's probably used to it by now, poor boy. "How are you today?"

"I'm good," Jongdae says. He rubs the back of his head. "We were, um, we were wondering if we could speak to you in private? For a minute or so. If that's okay."

Jongin is clearly surprised. He blinks up at his teammate and takes a second to look at his friends before turning back to face the older student. "Yeah, sure." He closes the book on his lap and puts it in his bag. "I'll be back in a moment," he says to his friends with a smile (the blonde boy nods slowly and the other crosses his arms. Kyungsoo looks down and says nothing) before standing up and hopping up the few remaining steps to come up besides Jongdae and Baekhyun. "Where do you want to go?"

The two Sixth Years take Jongin to the closest empty classroom they can find. It's small and unused, if the dust settling on the old tables is anything to go by, which means they are unlikely to be disturbed. Jongdae ushers Jongin inside and Baekhyun closes the door behind them, muttering a spell to lock the door just in case, and Jongin looks a little nervous when Baekhyun is finished and both boys turn to face him. Jongin shuffles his bag further up his shoulders. "What's up?" he asks, voice a little croaky. Baekhyun resists the urge to coo.

"We need your help," Jongdae says. He crosses his arms and leans against one of the tables, which creaks under his weight. "It's a bit urgent."

"It's about Chanyeol," Baekhyun adds.

Jongin's eyes widen and his grip tightens on his bag. "Okay." He shuffles on his feet. "He's sick, isn't he?" Baekhyun thinks he looks a little sad, almost uncomfortable at the mention of Chanyeol's situation.

Jongdae nods. "Yes, sort of." He glances at Baekhyun for a moment, who stares back at him, encouraging, and then clears his throat. "We haven't really been very truthful about the whole thing."

Baekhyun hums and nods, turning to Jongin. "It's a bit more than just 'sick'," he confirms.

"In what sense?"

And so they tell him. They tell him about how Baekhyun found Chanyeol almost a month ago, about the healers from St Mungo's, Jongdae's idea in the library. They tell him about the book they found in the Restricted Section, how the symptoms of the potion they found match Chanyeol's appearance, about what needs to be done in order to cure him. 

Baekhyun leaves out the part about him kissing Chanyeol. Jongdae doesn't bring it up either. 

By the time they have finished, Jongin has removed his bag from his back and is sat down in one of the dusty chairs, puppy eyes impossibly wide and plump lips apart in a soundless gasp. He leans back in his chair and runs his hands through his hair. "Oh wow," he says. "That's... That's something." He looks like he's having a tough time dealing with all the information that has just been thrown at him. Baekhyun doesn't blame him. He's still coming to terms with it himself.

"Yeah…" Jongdae sighs. He hops off from the table and dusts off his bottom before addressing the younger student again. "This is why we need your help," he says, making Jongin blink out of his thoughts and look up at him, eyebrows a little furrowed.

"How can I help? I don't know anything about this potion, if that's what you're asking about." He rubs his chin. "You're better asking Kyungsoo, he knows more about potions than I do."

Jongdae he wanders over to take a seat besides the seeker, and tries to put on his most convincing smile. "It's not that," he says. It takes him a second to figure out what to say, praying Jongin doesn't freak out. "We think you might be Chanyeol's true love."

Jongin doesn't have an opportunity to react at all when there is a sudden crash behind the door. The three boys turn around just in time to see two of Jongin's friends crash through the aging wood and fall in a messy tangle of limbs on the floor, spitting curses as they fumble about on the dirty stone.

"Sehun! Zitao!" Jongin cries out, standing up from his seat. "What are you doing?" He takes a few steps forward to help his friends untangle themselves but the blonde boy is already on his feet and pointing an accusing finger at Jongdae and Baekhyun, hair and robes such a frazzled mess that he looks more like a grumpy kitten than anything threatening.

"What do you mean Jongin is Chanyeol's true love?" the boy shouts. "And what's this about a Snow White potion?" In the background, still on the floor, the boy with the dark eyes rolls over and brandishes his wand at his friend, mumbling something that sounds a bit like "you almost snapped my wand, asshole," from under his robes. It would be an amusing sight if Baekhyun wasn't so furious at being spied on. 

Jongin goes over to the blonde boy and swats his accusing arm away. "Sehun stop it." He huffs at both intruders, the second having finally righted himself, standing on both legs rearranging his robes. "Guys! This was a private conversation!"

"Were you two spying on us-"

"Can it, hyung," the dark eyed boy - Zitao, Baekhyun figures - snaps, making Jongdae splutter indignantly at being cut off by a stranger. Zitao then addresses Jongin with a raised brow. "It was awfully suspicious sneaking away without telling us what was up, Jongin. Of course we were going to listen in."

"Yeah, it's not like you to keep secrets from us," Sehun says, shifting his weight to one hip. "We were bound to find out sooner or later, you might as well have kept us in the know."

"This has nothing to do with either of you!"

"Shush." Zitao waves his hands in dismissal and Jongdae is once again glaring at the younger for being interrupted. Who do these kids think they are? Zitao marches over to a nearby table and hops up onto it before turning to the two Sixth Year Gryffindors. "It doesn't matter now, we heard everything anyway. What is this about Jongin being Chanyeol's true love? How do you even know it's Jongin?"

Steam could have been coming out of Jongdae's ears if it could. "Because he's the only other logical person besides Baekhyun and myself!"

It seems that that was the wrong thing to say. "Oh my God, you guys have kissed him, haven't you?" Sehun snorts, hanging off of a wide eyed Jongin, who is staring at the older boys with pink cheeks. Zitao starts to giggle as well, sniggering into his hand. Is it really that amusing?

Jongin does his best to calm his friend's chortles, but it is ultimately Jongdae clearing his throat loudly that gathers everyone's attention. "Yes, and neither of us worked." He sends another glare at the two Slytherins when they start sniggering behind their hands. "And Chanyeol seems awfully fond of Jongin so we thought we might as well give it a go and ask for his help."

"Without anyone else butting in."

Of all the ways for this conversation to go, Baekhyun wishes more than anything that it had not gone like this. Jongdae looks seconds away from jumping someone, and Jongin is blushing up to his ears in embarrassment, no doubt struggling to find a way to apologise for his friend's actions but coming up short. Baekhyun is just tired. He's about to call it a day, ready to bury himself in his bed and forget the world exists when Zitao pipes up from where he is sat on a dusty table, picking at his painted nails.

"I say go for it."

Sehun spins around and sends a pointed look at his fellow Slytherin. "Zitao!" he splutters. "You can't be serious?" Even Jongin seems shocked that his friend would be supportive, surprise shown in the roundness of his eyes and mouth.

Zitao only shrugs. "What? All he has to do is kiss him, right? It's no big deal."

"But what about Soojung?"

Soojung? Isn't she that quiet girl in Jongin's year? Baekhyun only knows her as a chaser on the Slytherin quidditch team. "What about Soojung?" he asks.

"Her and Jongin started dating like a week ago," Sehun says.

Ah. Well that certainly puts a few holes in Baekhyun and Jongdae's plan. Baekhyun meets Jongdae's eyes across the room and the latter shrugs his shoulders, clearly at a loss for what they should do. If Jongin is in a relationship than getting him to kiss Chanyeol might be completely out of the question, especially if it was to find Chanyeol's true love. They were back to step one all over again.

But Jongin suddenly sighs, turning to face the people in the room and smile shyly. "I'm sure if I explained it to her she wouldn't mind," he says, "it's not like this is a normal situation."

"Does that mean you'll do it?" Jongdae asks hopefully, walking over to put his hand on Jongin's shoulder. He grins when Jongin nods his head.

"I guess so. If it's to help Chanyeol I'll do anything."

Baekhyun could kiss Jongin himself, honestly.

"Hold up, how do we know Chanyeol even likes Jongin like that?" Sehun pipes up. He's staring down the older Gryffindors, angled brow raised in speculation. Why is he so against Jongin helping them out? "I mean sure, they're good friends, but there's no actual proof Chanyeol is into him."

It's a fine point, but seemingly unappreciated. Jongdae already has his mouth open to snap back at Sehun's comment, but Jongin beats him to the chase. "Actually," he says with a hand running through his hair, cheeks red, "Chanyeol has kissed me before."

Baekhyun chokes. He really wasn't expecting that, an apparently neither was Sehun, who stumbles over his own feet and stares at Jongin with an almost betrayed expression, hands gripping his friend by the arm. "What?" he asks, voice stilted. "You're joking, right?"

Jongin looks apologetic as he smiles a wonky, embarrassed smile. "I'm not. He kissed me after we lost the House Cup last year."

"You never told me that!"

"I promised him I wouldn't tell anyone!"

Baekhyun slips in before the bickering escalates any further. The things Fifth Years find important, honestly. "Are you sure you're willing to help us, Jongin?" he says, voice loud to cut through the noise. Jongin looks away from Sehun, shaking his arm from his friend's grip and responding with a firm nod in both Baekhyun and Jongdae's directions.

"Of course. If Chanyeol is in trouble, I'll help any way I can."

Sending the younger a relieved smile, Jongdae lets go of his shoulder. "When are you next free? We kind of want to do this as soon as possible."

With O.W.Ls on the horizon, Baekhyun and Jongdae expect Jongin to schedule a meeting later that week, or later in the day at the earliest. But instead, he says "I can now, if you want," taking the older Gryffindor's by surprise. Jongin lets out a small laugh at their faces, shrugging. "We weren't really studying anyway."

Baekhyun and Jongdae had made sure they weren't doing anything for the whole day in case convincing Jongin to help them took longer than they hoped. Now was as good as time as any. "Okay," Jongdae nods, grinning. 

"Let's go."

~

"Wow. He looks like shite."

Jongdae slaps Zitao up the back of his head, causing the younger to splutter and trip over his feet, almost knocking the vase of tulips over onto Chanyeol's head. No matter how much he and Baekhyun protested, nothing could stop the Fifth Year Slytherins from trailing behind them on their way to the Hospital Wing, claiming that Jongin's business was their business too, even though they barely know Chanyeol beyond his friendship with Jongin. Baekhyun had to stop Jongdae from throttling the boys several times with a brief glance or calming hand on the arm, and even now he has to remind his friend not to commit murder when the pair poke and prod at Chanyeol's unconscious face, as if checking he is actually as sick as they made him out to be.

"Come on guys," Jongin says from where he is sat at the edge of Chanyeol's bed, a hand on the unconscious boy's leg. His voice is strained, tight in his throat, and the Slytherin boys stop fussing with Chanyeol's body and spare a worried glance at him before moving back, choosing to natter between them instead. Baekhyun thinks Jongin looks a little sick. His skin has gone a little green in places, a harsh contrast to the normally golden tan the young Gryffindor is admired for. He can't stop staring at Chanyeol's face. Baekhyun's heart breaks a little.

Jongin had stopped in his tracks when they first entered the Hospital Wing and finally saw Chanyeol's sleeping form. His face twisted into something so confused and upset that Baekhyun had to swallow the urge to take his hand. Now at Chanyeol's feet, Jongin looks even worse, almost like he might burst into tears at any second. Baekhyun walks over to Jongin and crouches down in front of him. "Hey," he says, getting the Gryffindor seeker's attention. "I know this might be really awkward for you, especially since you're already with someone."

I've been here, he wants to say. I know how it feels.

Jongin's lips stretch into a weak smile. "It's fine. I want to help." 

The sound of clinking makes the boys turn to see Zitao playing with the tulips, the stems hitting against the rim of the vase making the noise. "These are really nice flowers," the Slytherin says when he notices everyone looking at him. "I really like tulips. They're so pretty."

"They are." Baekhyun replies. He turns back to Jongin, nudging him softly with his elbow. "Thank you for sending them, by the way."

To his surprise, Jongin's face scrunches in confusion. "What do you mean? I didn't send any flowers."

"What? But-"

"Can we stop talking about flowers please?"

"Sorry," Jongin says, nodding in reply at Jongdae's words. The older Gryffindor is stood to the side, watching Zitao fiddle with the vase through narrowed eyes, arms crossed. Baekhyun stands up and moves away so Jongin too can rise and turn to face the boy in the bed. He takes in a deep breath and steps forward, coming to stand beside Chanyeol's shoulders. 

There are a few moments of silence, in which Jongin scans his eyes over Chanyeol's features, his closed eyes and pale cheeks. Chanyeol has changed quite a bit in the days that have passed. His ribs are more visible under his shirt and the stubble on his chin is getting darker across his jaw. Jongin lowers a hand to brush a few strands of Chanyeol's hair from his forehead, his fingers lingering on the boy's skin, before he takes another deep breath and closes his eyes.

When he opens them, there is so much determination in his eyes that Baekhyun feels a little stunned.

"Okay. Let's do this."

Everyone holds their breaths as Jongin places his hands on Chanyeol's shoulders and leans down, pressing his lips to Chanyeol's own.

~

_Defeat is not something the Gryffindor quidditch team experiences often. They are a team of legends, of heroes, a team with such a rich and vibrant history of victories and successes that even the thought of failure is a foreign feeling, the very idea of losing the Cup removed from their brains as soon as they are accepted to join such an esteemed group. Ever since he became seeker in his Fourth Year at Hogwarts, Jongin has never known defeat with his team, catching snitch after snitch in record time and making a name for himself as the greatest Gryffindor seeker since the Boy Who Lived himself was a member all those years ago._

_Which is why it hurts so much that for the first time since he dedicated his life to the sport, Jongin has to watch the House Cup being handed to the Captain of the Ravenclaw team instead of his own Captain. Failure tastes bitter on his tongue and acidic in his stomach and he feels like he has let the entire team down. He knows everyone will tell him differently, but he cannot help but feel like a waste of space as Luhan leads everyone back into the changing rooms, each member silent as they drink from water bottles and stretch out the tension in their muscles._

_Jongin walks over to where his clothing and bag is hung up on the hooks that line the room and takes his water bottle, downing half of it in seconds. He wipes stray droplets from his lips and goes to drink again when he feels a weight on his shoulder, and looks to the side to see Chanyeol stood beside him. He looks concerned._

_"Are you alright?"_

_No, Jongin wants to say. I could have done better, I should have tried harder, my head got too big and I cost us the game, I'm such an idiot, why am I here. I'm sorry, hyung, I'm sorry for being a waste of teammate. I'm sorry for letting you down._

_But he says none of those things. "I'm fine," he mumbles, taking a few gulps from his bottle. Chanyeol clearly doesn't believe him, doesn't move his hand from Jongin's shoulder, but then Luhan is calling for a team talk, so Chanyeol drops his hand and the pair turn around and take a seat, looking at their Captain as he surveys the faces of those around him._

_"You know what," Luhan says after a few moments of silence. "I know we lost today. I know this is the first loss we've experienced in a long time, and a pretty bad one at that."_

_A few of the older members start to raise their voices, a chorus of disappointment and anger rippling through the room. Jongin feels Chanyeol shuffle on the bench besides him, and he looks down to find the older Gryffindor squeezing his water bottle so tightly it would have burst if Jongin hadn't placed his hand gently over Chanyeol's own, making him lessen his grip and turn to Jongin with wide eyes. Jongin smiles at him and looks back at Luhan. He can feel Chanyeol's eyes still on him. Sweat trickles down his back._

_Luhan shushes the rising grumbles with a warning glance. "I know you're angry, trust me I am as well." He stands up from his seat and climbs onto the bench, turning to address his team with the most strong and proud look in his eyes that Jongin has ever seen. "But that was some of the best damn flying I've seen in my entire time as Captain of this team. The way you guys fought today was incredible. To go up against a monster like Kim Minseok and survive with numbers like that, no matter how shit you think they were, is something to be fucking proud of."_

_The atmosphere in the room starts to lighten. Jongin's fellow teammates start to sit up straighter, and Jongin's heart beats wildly with a new surge of adrenaline that wasn't there before. Chanyeol mumbles "goddamn Luhan and his speeches," under his breath, but he's grinning in time with everyone else in the room as the energy around them builds._

_"There's no point thinking about what should have been done, what could have been," Luhan shouts. "You are all brilliant quidditch players, loss or win be damned, and you should never doubt yourselves, especially in the face of defeat. I will not have such behaviour in my team, is that understood?"_

_"Yes, Captain!"_

_"Who cares if we lost? All that matters is that we are the best team Gryffindor could ask for, and we don't need a cup to tell us that." His words are followed by deep bellows of cheers and ripples of laughter, and Luhan hops down from the bench before pointing in Jongin's direction. "Jongin, Chanyeol," he says, "head down to the kitchens. Get whatever you can get your hands on. Tonight we're going to party so hard, Ravenclaw will forget they were even in the final!"_

_Jongin cheers with the rest of his team, but his mind is still elsewhere as he peels off his sweat-soaked uniform._

_Luhan sends them off to the kitchens as the rest of the team head up to the common room, the prospect of celebration urging them forward. Jongin is quiet as he walks alongside the taller boy, lost in his thoughts and only slightly listening to what Chanyeol is saying. The corridors are mostly empty, save for a few straggling students, and the rustling of the wind outside and the sound of his footsteps do nothing to distract him from replaying all the mistakes he made in the game over and over in his head. The feeling of a hand on his lower arms pulls him out of his trance and he looks up to find Chanyeol looks at him with concern again. "Are you okay? You look a bit down."_

_The smile Jongin sends him is weak, and he knows it. "I'm just disappointed, that's all. I really thought we had it."_

_Chanyeol hums in affirmation. "Losing is never easy." He shrugs his shoulders. "You get used to it though."_

_"I know. It still sucks." He lets out a hollow sigh. "I feel like I've let everyone down by not getting the snitch in time. Maybe I shouldn't even be on the team."_

_Chanyeol says nothing._

_The walk to the kitchens is quiet after that. When they finally reach the portrait of the fruit bowl by the Hufflepuff common room, Chanyeol tickles the pear and the portrait opens. Chanyeol steps aside to let Jongin enter first, and Jongin is immediately surrounded by a pack of House Elves, all asking in shy voices how he is and how he's been. "I'm fine," Jongin smiles, listening for Chanyeol's footsteps behind him and the click of the portrait closing before leaning down to ask for some food and drinks. "If you guys aren't busy."_

_The House Elves bow and scurry away. Jongin turns to see Chanyeol curled into a ball on his feet as he asks a passing elf to get him some more food. Chanyeol is not a short boy and his height is probably very intimidating to the tiny elves. It's sweet that he thought to accommodate himself to their height instead of making them look up at him. No wonder he seems popular, a young elf blushing as she runs off to get whatever it is Chanyeol asked for because of the charming smile the boy sent her way._

_The House Elves return minutes later, arms overflowing with treats and snacks that are easily dumped in Jongin's arms. There are several large bars of chocolate, cauldron cakes, paper bags full of freshly made pastries, even the odd bag of crisps in flavours Jongin wasn't even aware existed. He says thank you to each and every elf, and is rearranging the pile of food in his arms when he hears Chanyeol speak on the other side of the room._

_"Hey, Jongin?"_

_Jongin looks up to find Chanyeol stood just a few metres away, back in Jongin's direction. His arms are firm at his sides, hands clenched tightly into fists, and he is shaking slightly. He looks like he's struggling to keep himself together, and Jongin is about to ask if he is okay when Chanyeol starts to speak, cutting him off._

_"You belong on the team." He says. Jongin's chest tightens. "No matter what anyone says, or what you tell yourself. The team needs you." He turns around, and the expression on his face, full of strength and certainty, is something Jongin has never seen before on the older boy._

_"What?" Jongin says, and then Chanyeol is crossing the distance between them and kissing him, wet and open mouthed, and Jongin doesn't know when he starts kissing back but he can't find it in himself to care when Chanyeol feels so warm. He drops everything in his arms when Chanyeol raises a hand to gently caress his face, pushing them both backwards until the edge of the counter digs into Jongin's back. Chanyeol still smells like sweat and effort, and Jongin is certain he is equally as gross, but the feeling of Chanyeol's lips on his own is so soft and comforting that he doesn't care. The kiss lasts for seconds or a lifetime, Jongin isn't sure, but then Chanyeol suddenly rips away from him and stumbles backwards, tripping over his feet._

_"Oh my God. I'm so sorry, Jongin."_

_It takes a few moments for Jongin to register what he said, mind elsewhere. "It's fine," he says, throat a little dry. It's totally fine. His lips are wet in the corners, and he wipes his mouth on his sleeves. "It's fine."_

_Chanyeol shakes his head aggressively. "No, it's not fine. I'm so sorry, I just-" He runs his hands through his hair as he groans. "I didn't even ask, I just jumped you."_

_That is true, Jongin thinks. "I guess you did," he says._

_"I'm so sorry. I should have asked, you probably don't even like guys and yet…" Chanyeol huffs out a hollow and stilted sigh. He takes a few steps backwards, purposefully putting distance between them. "I understand if you hate me now."_

_Jongin doesn't hate Chanyeol. He plays with the edge of his sleeve as he thinks. "You should have asked."_

_Another hopeless sigh. "I know."_

_"And you're right. I don't like guys."_

_He doesn't. Jongin doesn't like guys that way._

_Chanyeol leans against the counter opposite Jongin and runs his hands over his face, ears now a violent shade of crimson. "Fuck, I'm sorry." He tips his head down to stare at the ground, as if hiding his_

_"And even if I did, I don't like you like that, Chanyeol."_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"But I don't hate you."_

_The older Gryffindor shoots his head up so fast his neck cracks. "You don't?"_

_How could Jongin hate Chanyeol? "No," he says. "It took me by surprise, yes, but I don't hate you for it."_

_Chanyeol looks a little bit relieved, if anything. "Okay." He steps forward to gather up the food that Jongin dropped during the kiss (Chanyeol kissed him) and Jongin stutters out of his daze to bend down and help him. "I still feel awful."_

_Arms now once again overflowing with snacks, Jongin laughs, deep and light. "If it's any consolation, you're a really good kisser," he says with a bashful grin that only gets wider when Chanyeol blushes all the way up to the tips of his ears._

_"Am I?"_

_"Yes. If I was gay I would definitely fall for you."_

_The smile Chanyeol sends him is a little weak, but it warms Jongin nonetheless. "Thanks, I guess." Jongin hopes he doesn't feel bad anymore._

_Chanyeol's House Elves return with even more food than what Jongin asked for, but Chanyeol shows no signs of struggle as he gathers it all into his large arms. When they are sure they have everything they need and want, Chanyeol suggests they head back to the common room. The team are waiting for them after all. They bid goodbye to the elves and Chanyeol shoulder's the portrait open, closing it behind them with the same method when both boys are back in the school corridors._

_Jongin starts to walk down the corridor, but when he notices Chanyeol is not beside him, he turns around to find Chanyeol stood in place, nibbling his lip. He looks at Jongin with eyes glowing with uncertainty._

_"About that. About me… You won't tell anyone, will you?"_

_Ah. Jongin can see why he would be concerned. Putting on as reassuring smile as he can muster, Jongin walks towards him and lifts a foot to nudge the other boy in the shin. "Don't worry," he says. "I won't tell anyone."_

_The sigh Chanyeol breathes is deep and full of weight but he looks relieved, and that is enough for Jongin. "Thank you." He starts down the corridor and Jongin jogs after him, shorter legs already struggling to keep up with Chanyeol's longer strides. "And sorry, again."_

_Jongin laughs and nudges him in the leg again._

_When they are just outside the Fat Lady, Jongin asks Chanyeol to stop for a second. Chanyeol does, and Jongin takes a moment to look at his features, his strong nose and almond eyes, the curve of his jaw, before leaning up and kissing him on the cheek. "Just ask next time, okay?" he says._

_Jongin doesn't like guys, but when Chanyeol laughs, loud and deep, deeper than anything Jongin has heard before, a small part of him says that maybe, just maybe, it might not be so strange a feeling after all._

~

Nothing happens.

Chanyeol does not wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: Yixing is not as innocent as everyone thinks he is. He's actually quite sneaky and mischievous, which means he is perfect for spying on the other quidditch teams as no one suspects him of anything. He's been very useful for the Hufflepuff team for a while. That, and the fact he is close friends with Luhan, is why he knows so much about what happens in the Gryffindor team. Baekhyun's opinion of Yixing really is rather unrealistic lol
> 
> I feel like I made Chanbaek's relationship a bit too deep?? They were only supposed to be friends that made out every now and then but I ended up giving them a whole dramatic backstory that I feel takes a lot of attention away from everything else. I'm not sure, please tell me what you think! Also, I hope I portrayed all the other EXO members accurately, feel free to tell me your thoughts about what I can do to improve!
> 
> I'm not sure when I'll be able to get the next chapters out, seeing as I go on holiday for two weeks next week and can't take my laptop with me, but I will do my best not to have the wait be as long as it was for this chapter. Thank you for being so patient with me, I love you all very much <3
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! If you have any questions or simply just want to scream about exo, feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://kokokysoo.tumblr.com/ask) or in the comments~


	3. disappear like smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there. it's been a while.
> 
> if you have read this fic before, i would suggest going back and reading the first two chapters to remember what's happened so far. i've also changed and added in a few things, so there's that as well. they're not very big changes but they're changes nonetheless. you might not even notice them but i thought i would mention it anyway lol.
> 
> i made this chapter extra long (15,000 words holy shit) to make up for the long wait. i hope everything makes sense!
> 
> warnings for indirect animal harm/cruelty and scenes of a potentially upsetting nature. don't take these too seriously, but they are there. happy reading!

Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year.

At least at Hogwarts it is. The castle comes alive in ribbons of colour, the walls decorated from floor to ceiling in bright shades of purple, orange, and green. Pumpkins float in mid-air, fiery grins and gurns casting dancing shadows on the cold stone walls and floors; and translucent ghosts glide down the corridors like gusts of smoke, cackling elatedly with their friends as unsuspecting students fall prey to the tricks that lay in wait in trap them. The air smells sweet, like cheap candy and sugar; and the Great Hall is practically simmering with energy, the whole castle condensing into one giant mass, attacking plates of delicious food like they haven't eaten for days.

There is no other place in the whole of the United Kingdom that glows as brightly as Hogwarts does on Halloween. If it were visible to muggles, it would almost certainly appear like a brilliant orange flame in the distance, perched on a hill and burning like a torch, a beacon of mischief and mayhem. The windows and doors are carved like a Jack-o'-lantern, and the ringing of screams and laughter can be heard in the chilly winter winds. The moon is big and haunting as she hangs like a spirit in the night sky, surrounded by tiny, flickering stars.

Halloween at Hogwarts is the most wonderful time of the year.

But high up in Gryffindor Tower, far from the chaos, and nestled within the comfort of their dorm, two boys sit in silence.

The clock on the wall ticks loudly, each second feeling longer than the next. Baekhyun watches its path with heavy eyes, corners crusty with tiredness. He is lying on his bed, duvet wrapped around him tightly like a cocoon in a bid to keep warm. No matter how he arranges himself, he can still feel a draught of cold air tickling his feet and ankles. He squirms to pull them closer to his body, but he still feels a little chilly, like a radiator that is just starting to break down. He gives up when the cold reaches his knees, and buries his face into his pillow when he feels Jongdae looking at him.

Letting out a sigh, Jongdae turns back to his book. Both he and Baekhyun have been handed extra work to do to help keep up with all the classes they've missed, but Jongdae is the only one of the two to have actually started studying. Their professors may be sympathetic and understanding of their situation, but they have to draw the line somewhere. They're still students after all. With exams on the horizon, they need to concentrate on their school work. Time won't stop for them, no matter how much they want it to.

The room is quiet, besides the sound of the pages turning. Baekhyun's own books sit abandoned on his bedside table, gathering dust. He rolls around to look at them, reading the titles in his head and blinking when all the letters seem to blur together, blobs of gold on thick paper and woven fabric. He's tried to read them but they're just so boring. He always ends up getting lost in his head and reading large chunks of text without absorbing any of the information, forcing him to go back and suffer through it all again. There's not much point trying if he can barely get through the first chapter without falling asleep. He can almost feel his future as a healer dripping down the drain with every second.

It's been three days since their last attempt to wake Chanyeol. Three very long, very empty days. The boys have tried their hardest to smile and stay positive, to keep each other confident and full of energy, but nothing they do or say seems to work for very long. 

They keep to themselves, walking the corridors and grounds with their heads low; or hiding in their dorm room like mice, away from the pitying eyes of their friends and classmates. That's the worst part - the way people look at them like they're the ones that are sick. Jongin makes an effort to apologise to them every time they see him, and they're tired of telling him to stop. Being around people is making them twice as exhausted as they already are.

The clock chimes when it hits the hour. Lunch should be over now. Baekhyun can hear a surge of rising voices as the school files out of the Great Hall, feet tapping on stone as students make their way to their next class of the day. 

Neither boy makes an effort to get up. Jongdae sighs and uncrosses his legs to stretch them out, and Baekhyun snuggles deeper into his bedcovers. The irony of skipping classes to make up for missing them doesn't escape the latter and he snorts, blowing dust off the books beside him. 

He watches the specks float through the air and land somewhere near Chanyeol's bed. It's still as messy as the day Chanyeol last slept in it. Baekhyun takes in the sight, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Baekhyun likes Chanyeol's bed. It's the most colourful and decorated of all the beds in the room, including the ones belonging to his other two dorm mates, who he rarely sees. 

While Jongdae's bed is covered in quidditch and football posters (never one to stray from his muggle loyalties), and Baekhyun's is more dirty clothes than quilt and pillows, Chanyeol's bed is adorned with photographs and drawings, little portraits and polaroid's stuck to every inch of wood within reach. Most of them are of his family - his parents, his sister, and his little dog, Toben - but a lot of them are of his friends as well, snapshots of their lives together at school. Some have been taken on a muggle camera, faces frozen in time; and one of them at the back is incredibly old, yellowing with age - a picture of his grandparents on their wedding day. Chanyeol has always been close with his family, so Baekhyun isn't surprised he'd have a photo like that in his possession. 

Baekhyun doesn't get on very well with his own family, but Chanyeol's have showed him nothing by warmth and kindness in all the years he has known them. Their house is like a second home to him. The last time he saw them was when they came to visit Chanyeol a few days after he got sick. He hopes he can see them all again soon.

Baekhyun is trailing his eyes lazily over the photos, taking in the goofy grins and laughing faces, when he spies one photo hidden at the back, concealed between shots of Chanyeol's sister and the three friends making snowmen at Jongdae's house. It's so hidden that Baekhyun almost misses it, and he can only just see it from where he is awkwardly draped across his bed. 

It looks quite old, if the curling corners and slightly faded colouring is anything to go by. He shuffles forwards a little on his stomach and squints, and soon the tiny picture comes into greater focus.

The picture is still. It must have been taken on a muggle camera. Two small boys, probably no older than seven or eight years old, stand side by side in front of what looks like a garden; a tall fence is visible on one side, lined with beds of tulips, bulbs blossoming brilliantly in red, yellow, and pink. One of the boys is tall and round, a pair of gold rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose, large ears floppy as they stick out from under his hat. The other is shorter and skinnier, hair pitch black and cut close to his scalp, a shy smile on his little face. Both are streaked from head to toe in dirt, the largest of them more so, and the shorter has a plaster on his knee that is just visible below the hem of his dungarees. Holding hands, they look sweet together. There's a tree house in the background, only half built.

The larger boy is Chanyeol. Baekhyun would recognise that dorky-looking child anywhere, big floppy ears and goofy grin as familiar as the back of his hand. But he has no idea who the other kid is, with his little legs and round white eyes. Something about him does ring a bell, though. He has a funny feeling he's seen the boy before, passed by him in the corridors or seen his face in a large crowd.

In fact, the other boy looks a little bit like-

"What's that under your bed?"

Baekhyun jumps at the sound of Jongdae's voice. Craning his head over his shoulder, he turns to look at him.

Jongdae is lying on his stomach, book resting against his pillow and head turned in Baekhyun’s direction, but he’s staring at the space under Baekhyun’s bed with wide eyes, lips curled in a way that makes him look as if he's smelt something awful. Baekhyun blinks at him curiously. 

“I don't know. Probably clothes, why?"

"I don't think it's clothes,” the other boy says.

Climbing out of his cocoon, Baekhyun swings his legs around and rolls onto his back. "Are you sure?" he asks, taking another glance at the other boy before pushing himself up. "It's not porn, if that's what you're implying." He's not an amateur. Too many tense incidents with his unfortunate dormmates have resulted in him finding much better hiding places for those kinds of things.

Baekhyun snorts when Jongdae shoves a foot out to kick him in the leg. The latter had missed him by several inches, but Baekhyun stops short of responding with a shot of his own when he sees the comically appalled yet slightly uncomfortable look on his friend's face.

"Don't be nasty. That's not what I'm on about."

He is still staring at the spot under Baekhyun’s bed. Frowning, Baekhyun turns to face him, crossing his legs and folding his hands on his lap. 

"Then what are you on about? What could possibly be under my bed?”

Jongdae moves in for a closer look. He squints his eyes for a moment and leans forward, gripping onto the side of the bed so he doesn't tip forward too far. He pulls back again after a few seconds, nose scrunching. "I don't know,” he says, bringing his hands up to rub his eyes for a moment before taking another look. “It's… furry?"

"What? Furry?” Baekhyun doesn't even keep at pet at school, let alone something with fur. When Jongdae looks up at him and shrugs, he rolls his eyes and grips onto the side of the mattress to hang off it upside down. Really now, what could possibly be under his bed to have even Jongdae Kim himself on edge?

At first he can't see anything. The lights in the dorm aren't very bright anyway, and it's almost pitch black in the space under the bed, the only thing visible being the shadows and outlines of random items of clothing and his suitcase, pushed up near the wall. He’s about to pull himself up and throw something at Jongdae for being a daft blind idiot, but after his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees something. A dark shadow, about the length of his thigh, curled up near one of the bottom bedposts, covered in a thick layer of matted fur. 

There’s a real life monster under his bed.

Baekhyun pulls back so fast he gets dizzy, his spinning vision forcing him to grab onto the bedposts to stop himself from toppling over. "Merlin!" he screams, scrambling back as far as he can go. "What the fuck is that?!"

Jongdae gestures wildly into the air. "How am I supposed to know? It's your bed!" he yells, pointing an accusing finger in his friend's direction.

"So?" Baekhyun swats Jongdae's hand away. "Whatever it is, it's creepy as hell." Running a hand through his hair, he groans. "I can't have weird shit under my bed. How do we get rid of it?"

For they know it could be dangerous, some malicious magical creature that he skipped over during his Defence Against the Dark Arts studies or something, and he really doesn't feel like being mauled to death in his sleep because he couldn't be bothered to move it. He'd never rest again with the knowledge that something evil was living just inches beneath him every night. The very thought makes him shudder, a shiver trickling down his spine. 

Hopping nervously on the spot, Jongdae takes a moment to look around the room. "There," he says finally, pointing to the abandoned pile of quidditch gear near the bathroom door. "Pass me my broom.” Baekhyun hops off the bed and shuffles over to grab it, giving the bed a wide berth as if the creature will jump out and attack him if he gets too close. Shuffling back, he hands it over to Jongdae, who pulls his jumper up over his nose and drops down to his knees on the floor. 

"What are you going to do with it?" Baekhyun asks gingerly.

"I'm going to get it out."

“What if it’s a rogue Monster Book?”

“Then we die.”

It takes a few attempts to catch the fuzzy object. With the space between the beds being so small, under the bed so dark, and Jongdae's broom rather long, he struggles to manoeuvre it just right. He resorts to lying on his front in the aisle between the beds and handling the broom with one hand, swinging it from side to side. Baekhyun kneels crouched on the bed behind him, leaning over and watching with narrowed eyes. Finally, with one big swoop of his broom, Jongdae manages to hit it. With a slow tug, he pulls it out from under the bed.

It’s a dead cat.

Baekhyun chokes, gasping so hard he falls backwards off his bed and lands with a crash onto the floor. Jongdae lets out a petrified shriek and drops his broom, jumping up and running over to the other side of the room to get as far away from the animal as possible, not before whacking his head on one of the bedposts. “Oh my God,” he groans, clutching his head. “Oh my God, there’s a dead cat under your bed, oh fuck, this is happening, oh my God.”

Stumbling up from the floor, with bedsheets curled around his ankles, Baekhyun dives up onto his dormmates bed, almost hitting the ceiling with his crown in the process. "Oh fuck, what do we do?" he cries, waving his hands hysterically in the air. His skin has prickled up in bumps all over his arms so fast it feels like it's about to crawl off his body. There's a dead cat under his bed! "How did it get in here, whose is it?" _Why is there a dead cat under his bed?! ___

__Jongdae's response is a full body shiver, his hands flapping at his side. "I don't know!" he whines, the pulsating soreness on his forehead making it difficult to think. How long has it been there? How could it have gotten in the dorm? None of the five boys living there own a cat, so why was there one under Baekhyun's bed? Taking a deep breath, he gingerly edges his way over to peer over the edge of a bed, urging himself to take another look._ _

__"Oh sweet Merlin."_ _

__Freezing mid splutter, Baekhyun looks at Jongdae with panic in his eyes. "What? What is it?" he wheezes. Jongdae looks like he's about to have a fit, hands shaking as he brings them up to cover his mouth in a gasp. Slowly, he turns to look at his friend. Baekhyun's heart is pounding so fast in his chest that he feels like he could throw up at any second._ _

__"It's Luhan's cat," Jongdae stutters, voice barely above a whisper. "It's Bao."_ _

__Nothing happens for a few seconds, both boys frozen where they stand, struck dumb with shock. Bao? Luhan's cat that went missing a week ago? It can't be true. After what seems like hours of stillness, Baekhyun hops over onto his own bed and glances down, closing his eyes and shooting a hand out to lean against the wall when he recognises the striped brown fur and pointy ears of Luhan's beloved pet. She's curled up on her side, tail tucked in tight and covering her back legs. She looks like she's napping._ _

__Baekhyun looks away instantly, tugging at his hair. Luhan has been distraught for days, Yixing has been searching for her every free moment he has, and she was under his bed the whole time? Taking a few shallow breaths, Baekhyun turns to face Jongdae, who is still frozen on the spot, hands covering his face._ _

__“What do we do?” he asks, voice shaking in his throat. How can he ever face Luhan again?_ _

__Jongdae brings his shaking hands up to wipe his hair away from his face. The dorm is silent for a minute as he thinks, and Baekhyun shuffles nervously on his feet._ _

__“We should tell him," Jongdae says finally. "It's his cat, he needs to know."_ _

__Groaning low in his throat, Baekhyun throws his head back, letting it bang on the wall beside him. “Luhan is going to kill us." He punctuates every word with a thump, stopping only when he catches sight of Jongdae raising a frustrated brow at him from across the room._ _

__“It's okay, it wasn’t our fault," the other boy replies, rubbing his hands on the back of his head, as if reassuring himself that his words are correct and they definitely weren't responsible for murdering their friend's cat. "We haven't done anything wrong.”_ _

__“So? She’s in our dorm. How are we supposed to explain that?”_ _

__“Cats do that, don’t they? Take themselves off to die. Maybe she was ill and came here to go without Luhan making a fuss?”_ _

__Baekhyun isn't convinced, and he makes Jongdae know by shrugging his shoulders. “There’s no reason why she would be ill though. She was perfectly fine last time we saw her.”_ _

__“That was like four days ago. Something could have happened between then and now.”_ _

__Baekhyun throws his hands into the air. “Then I don’t know!" he concludes with a yell that makes Jongdae jump. With another great sigh, he marches over to Chanyeol's bed and throws himself onto it face first, landing with a stunted noise that in any other situation would have made Jongdae laugh. "Merlin, this year keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?” he hisses._ _

__Outside, the howling wind makes the windows of the dorm rattle and shake. Jongdae sighs along with it, watching his friend curl himself up into a ball in Chanyeol's dusty unused sheets. He can't help but feel that the world is against them right now, doing its best to make their lives as miserable as possible. First their best friend gets sick, they're failing their classes, and now a cat has managed to crawl under his bed and pop its clogs under their very noses._ _

__Jongdae finds himself looking at the cat between the beds. Bao was a pampered puss (and often times an unfriendly one) but his heart still pangs at the thought of her no longer being around. She was a good friend and protector of Minseok's kitten, Tan, who might as well be Jongdae's too with the amount that he plays with her; and she gave really nice, warm cuddles - when she let you anywhere near her. Luhan loved her like she was his own child. He will be absolutely crushed when he finds out. Jongdae hopes he can forgive them._ _

__Just then, he spies something that makes his eyebrows shoot up into his forehead. He takes a few steps forward and squints his eyes, staring so hard at the animal below him that he starts to get a headache. He drops to a crouch and inspects her even closer, just to be sure._ _

__“Hold on. She’s not dead.”_ _

__The little tuft of hair that is visible beneath Chanyeol's duvet twitches slightly. Baekhyun's head pops out from under the covers like a mole, hair sticking up at odd angles._ _

__“She’s not?”_ _

__Jongdae shakes his head. “No. She’s alive.” He can barely believe himself as he says it._ _

__Climbing out of the covers, Baekhyun crawls across the mattress to peer over at the bundle of tabby fur on the floor. “Are you sure?" he says, grimacing. "She looks pretty dead to me.”_ _

__Rolling his eyes, Jongdae reaches up to flick his friend on the forehead._ _

__“Shut up, you idiot, she’s still breathing, look.”_ _

__Baekhyun rubs his sore brow and sticks his tongue out at the other boy before looking down. At first he doesn't see it, too busy blinking through the pain on his face to notice anything significant about the seemingly dead cat. But after a longer look and significant prompting from Jongdae, Baekhyun just manages to make out the miniscule rise and fall of the little cat's chest. The breaths are slow and shallow but definitely there._ _

__“Oh thank Merlin. I was this close to having a panic attack," he wheezes. A giant weight has lifted from his shoulders and he collapses backwards, bouncing up and down on his back as he hits the mattress. He can't say he's ever been so relieved in his life._ _

__"Wait," he suddenly utters, scrambling back up when a thought crosses his mind. "What’s wrong with her then?”_ _

__“I don’t know," says Jongdae. He's still crouched down beside the sleeping pet, staring at her hard. His brow is furrowed and he's rubbing his forehead, as if he's mulling over a particularly difficult exam question that he can't figure out the answer to._ _

__"What’s that around her mouth?” he says after a few moments._ _

__Curious, Baekhyun gets off the bed and moves over to stand beside the other boy. He bends down to see what Jongdae is on about, and sure enough there is a strange, thick, dark red gelatinous substance stuck to her teeth and whiskers. It's dotted with little specks of beige, crumbly-looking in texture, making the red liquid look rather lumpy. Whatever it is, it looks vile. Baekhyun cringes, choking down the urge to gag._ _

__Swallowing, Jongdae reaches out to poke at the gooey gunk. He scoops up a bit onto his finger, and Baekhyun shoots out a hand to grab him by the arm, halting him in his tracks._ _

__“Ew, Dae, don’t touch that.”_ _

__Jongdae shakes him off. He gingerly brings his finger up to his nose, giving it a few sniffs. He had closed his eyes to smother is repulsion, but they shoot open in surprise when he realises what the substance is. He turns to Baekhyun, eyes wide._ _

__“Cherry," he splutters out. "It's black cherry."_ _

__"What? Are you sure?"_ _

__Jongdae nods, holding out his finger for his friend to get a whiff of, but Baekhyun just swats it away, disgusted. "Get off, I believe you," he whines. He doesn't need or want proof that the sticky goo is what his friend says it is; Jongdae's word is sound enough for him._ _

__"That's a bit weird, though," he say. "Do cats even like cherries?”_ _

__Jongdae, who is wiping off his sticky hand on a discarded sock, shrugs at him. “Apparently so." He pushes himself up with a sigh when he's done, leaning against a nearby bedpost and crossing his arms. "I wonder how she got hold of them. They don’t grow on the grounds and there’s no way she could have gotten into the kitchens.”_ _

__Bao may be stubborn, but she isn't stupid. The House Elves don't take kindly to intruders; she would have been flattened like a pancake if she even got close to breaking into the kitchens. But how else would she have found cherries?_ _

__Baekhyun hums in thought, running a hand through his ruffled hair. “Maybe Chanyeol left some pie out or something. It is his favourite, I wouldn't put it past him to have a secret stash under his bed somewhere.”_ _

__As soon as the words leave his mouth, Baekhyun and Jongdae jump to face each other, a spark flickering between them like the crackling of fireworks._ _

__“Wait. You don’t think..?” Baekhyun gasps, eyes wide and glistening, but he doesn't manage to finish his question before Jongdae suddenly spins around and dives back onto the floor. He gently moves Bao out of the way before dropping to his stomach, wiggling his way under Chanyeol's bed._ _

__"Where is it, where is it, where is it…"_ _

__Digging around in the dark, he fumbles blindly, hands thumping against everything from old books to a battered cauldron; stacks of chocolate frog cards, dusty magazines, and a smelly quidditch boot (just the left one). When his hand sinks into something cold and slimy, he lets out a muffled "aha!" and wriggles out from under the bed backwards. Pushing himself up, he drops what he found on an exposed part of Baekhyun's mattress._ _

__A cherry pie sits in front of them, half-eaten and as fresh as the day it was baked._ _

__"Sweet Merlin," Baekhyun chokes, gagging into his elbow. “That is absolutely disgusting.” It may look perfectly fine, but Chanyeol has been sick for over a month now. How long has that pie just been sitting there, stewing away in the heat of a sweaty boys dorm? The very thought makes Baekhyun want to jump in the shower and scrub his whole body raw. He looks at it and gags again, and Jongdae sends him a pitying look over his shoulder._ _

__When Baekhyun calms down, Jongdae turns back to the pie. “Look, there’s a slice missing," he states, leaning forward to point at the gap in the pastry. Buried under crumbling crust and thick, gooey cherry is a ruler, most likely the one Chanyeol uses for his Astronomy classes. The end is covered in pie. Chanyeol probably used it as a makeshift knife to cut himself a slice. "Chanyeol must have eaten it.”_ _

__“Do you reckon this is how he got sick?" he asks from behind the protection of his elbow. His voice is shaking slightly in disgust, and not just because of the gross pie. "Someone poisoned him with this?”_ _

__Jongdae nods slowly. He feels sick, like his stomach is full of rocks. They knew already that Chanyeol was most likely poisoned, but the fact that they are most likely correct chills him to the bone. His knees feel like jelly and he wants to sit down but he doesn't, choosing instead to lean against the far wall._ _

__“Must be. And look at Bao. She clearly ate it and now she looks like an aristocrat’s scarf.”_ _

__Across from him, Baekhyun starts to pace again. He swerves around the scattered objects on the floor, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "How do you reckon he got it?" he asks. With all the pieces falling into place, he can't help but feel a little enthused. He struggles to stop his lips from twitching at the corners, a knowing smirk tugging at his mouth as his brain works a mile a minute._ _

__Jongdae skims through his memories of the day before Chanyeol was found asleep. “Someone must have given it to him after quidditch practise," he theorises. Like Baekhyun, something inside him ignites, filling him to the brim with energy he didn't know he had. He pushes himself off the wall, stepping towards the other boy with his arms raised, as if he's waiting to catch all of the words coming out of his mouth._ _

__"He went ahead without me so I didn’t see them do it, but that’s the only time they could have given it to him without us noticing.”_ _

__“Yes! He was asleep by the time you went up to bed, wasn’t he?”_ _

__“And he was with us all day besides that one moment.”_ _

__The energy in the room has grown to be palpable, almost sizzling. For the first time in days, the two Gryffindor boys feel like they've accomplished something; they're one step closer to finding out what happened to their best friend and why; one step closer to having Chanyeol back by their side. Their cheeks bloom with colour, and their smiles are so brilliant that if anyone were to enter the room at that moment they would surely end up grinning too._ _

__"Holy shit!" Baekhyun shouts giddily, throwing his arms into the air. "We actually have a lead!"_ _

__In a fit of enthusiasm, Baekhyun launches himself across the room to pull Jongdae into an embrace. They hold each other close, hopping up and down on the spot like a pair of overzealous puppies. Jongdae is warm and firm in his arms, and he tightens them instinctively, hugging the other boy so tight he can barely breathe. He can't believe they've found something useful to help them solve this mystery. And in his own dorm no less! The only thing convincing him this isn't all a dream is the thumping of Jongdae's heart against his chest._ _

__"We're so close, Dae," he whispers into the curve of the other boy's shoulder._ _

__"I know, Baek," Jongdae says softly. "I know."_ _

__The castle is loud that Halloween, but at that moment, Gryffindor Tower is peacefully quiet._ _

__

__~_ _

__

__Luhan is in the library, hunched down at one of the far desks behind stacks of books and tomes, long lengths of parchment cascading down onto the floor over the edges of the desk. Every inch is covered in dark inky scribbles and notes. Even his hands are dotted with stray blobs of ink, patches of darkness that mirror the exhausted shadows around his eyes. He must have been sat there for a while._ _

__Beside him, pressed up against the wall on Luhan's right side, sits Minseok, his nose buried in a book almost half his entire height. The Ravenclaw is turning a page when he spies the two young Gryffindors shuffling towards them, their eyes shifting around their surroundings suspiciously, as if they are afraid they're being watched. In Jongdae's hands is a large box. He's holding it tightly but gently, carrying it just slightly in front of him like he's nervous about whatever is concealed inside jumping out and crawling up his arms._ _

__Minseok knows that is never a good sign. With a short, resigned sigh, he slams his book shut and rests it on the table, crossing his arms over his chest. He leans back in his chair, face stoic as the younger students come to a stop in front of him. They look glum, a bit scared almost, and he would ask them what was wrong if he wasn't so familiar with their little pranks. Being related to Jongdae makes you wary of these sorts of things, especially when Byun Baekhyun is nearby._ _

__"What do you want," he asks bluntly. He really don't have time for their silly jokes._ _

__To his surprise, neither boy reacts the way he expected. Jongdae sends him an unimpressed but weak glare, and Baekhyun looks down at his feet, twisting his hands in front of him. They glance at each other briefly, seemingly having a full conversation with their eyes in a matter of seconds, before Jongdae carefully lifts the box and places it on Minseok's closed book. With a subtle hand, he pushes it over in Luhan's direction._ _

__Minseok has half a mind to ask them what's inside, but their pitiful expressions and shuffling feet have him frowning at them instead. They're being awfully suspicious. Minseok has known Jongdae since he was born and he's never seen his cousin look so guilty. Something must be very wrong._ _

__Jongdae clears his throat._ _

__“Luhan?”_ _

__The elder Gryffindor doesn't stop scribbling. He doesn't look up from his notes either, merely hums to show that he's listening. When no one speaks, he looks up briefly, flashing the boys a smile before dropping his head back down to carry on with his studies._ _

__“What is it?" he asks a little impatiently. "Aren't you guys supposed to be in class?”_ _

__Baekhyun and Jongdae look at each other again. Baekhyun shifts the box even closer._ _

__“We’re really sorry," he says quietly._ _

__Now Minseok is definitely concerned. He turns to Luhan (still scribbling away without a care in the world) and elbows him in the ribs, making him squawk and drop his quill onto the floor. Luhan turns to him with fire on his tongue, ready to berate his friend for distracting him from his notes, when he notices the expressions on the younger Gryffindor's faces. Minseok nods towards the box, gesturing for him to open it._ _

__"Oh, okay," Luhan mumbles. He stands up and leans across the table, taking the lid of the box in his hands. Gingerly, he opens it. Minseok cranes his neck to see what's inside._ _

__Baekhyun's heart breaks when Luhan lets out a shattered gasp, hand flying to his mouth. He closes his eyes just before Luhan drops like lead into his chair, a dry sob wracking through his body. He can feel Jongdae shift awkwardly beside him, and he takes a bit of the other boy's shirt in his hand, fondling it between his fingers._ _

__"I'm so sorry, Luhan."_ _

__No one moves or speaks for a long time. At some point, Minseok wraps an arm around his friend’s shoulders, rubbing his back with a comforting hand, holding Luhan's own in the other. The other students around them are starting to stare, peeping over their books and through the gaps in the bookcases, and Minseok does his best to glare menacingly at them until they go away. It's bad enough that Luhan is upset; he doesn't need an audience to make him feel more worse than he already does._ _

__“Where did you find her?”_ _

__Baekhyun and Jongdae turn their heads to look at each other. Neither of them want to answer the question, but they know that they have to. They battle with their eyes for a second before Jongdae lets out a shallow sigh and steps forwards, dreading the minutes to come._ _

__“She was under Baekhyun’s bed," he says._ _

__“Under… What? Why was she there?" Luhan sounds lost, confused. Minseok stares at them incredulously, eyes narrowed as he presses them for an answer, but before they can say anything they are cut off by Luhan aggressively slamming his fists onto the desk, making them jump._ _

__"What the fuck did you idiots do to my cat?!”_ _

__“Nothing!" Baekhyun cries, scrambling up to the table to shush him. They've brought too much attention to themselves already; if they give Madam Victoria an excuse to come over then she will surely kick them all out for sure. Baekhyun doesn't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, especially so with a situation as sensitive as this. "We did nothing, we just found her there, I swear!"_ _

__Luhan looks unconvinced, face still aflame with rage. In a panic, Baekhyun gestures over his shoulder for Jongdae to join him, and the other boy steps forward, pulling a bag out from under his robes as he does so._ _

__"We think she ate some of this," Jongdae whispers. Dropping the bag onto the table, he pulls out the cherry pie. It's a little battered from the journey, but otherwise still as perfect as they found it. Baekhyun swallows his repulsion and looks up at the older students' faces, searching them for any signs of understanding._ _

__Alas, there are none. Minseok looks irritated beyond belief and Luhan is understandably fuming, cheeks wet and ears an angry red. His hands are gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles are turning white, and it seems that even Minseok's hand on his lower back is doing little to soothe him._ _

__"You two had better tell me what the fuck is going on, or so help me God, you will not live to see Christmas morning."_ _

__With one last fearful look to each other, Baekhyun and Jongdae start to explain._ _

__They do their best to mention everything they possibly can. With a whole month to recall and digest, the boys try their hardest to ensure that their retelling of events are quick and to the point. They don't have much time; the clock on the wall is ticking steadily closer to the end of final period, and students of all ages are starting to pack away their belongings and file out of the library, slowly making their way to the Great Hall in preparation for dinner. The library will close soon, and it's the best place to have this conversation. Neither of them want to talk about their experiences in a place where anyone can hear them._ _

__They spare no detail. The elixir, the kisses, the pie; they tell them everything. By the time they finish speaking, Minseok and Luhan look lost for words. The former has leaned all the way back in his chair, free hand holding his bangs away from his face, brow creased. Luhan sits in silence as he stares off away from the group, face blank and eyes distant. The younger boys stand quiet with their hands by their sides. There's a lot of information to process - a lot of which they cannot fully comprehend themselves - and they wait patiently for the dust to settle, sparing each other reassuring glances as he eerie silence of the library hangs around them._ _

__Surprisingly, it's Luhan that speaks first._ _

__“So what you're saying is," he whispers, voice tight in his throat, "they're okay. Chanyeol and… and Bao.”_ _

__Jongdae doesn't answer straight away. “Yes," he says finally. "They're fine. Just sleeping.”_ _

__The library is almost empty now. Looking through the gaps between the bookshelves, Baekhyun can see there are only a few stragglers left. A heavy silence has settled, the sinking sun casting murky shadows around them through the window, making the atmosphere feel all the more melancholic. Baekhyun wrings his hands in front of him, uncomfortably nervous._ _

__Luhan takes the box in his hands. He holds it on his lap and stares at it for a moment before clutching it close to his chest, cradling it. Minseok sends him a weak smile and squeezes his shoulder with his free hand, and if Luhan noticed the gesture he doesn't acknowledge it. The older Gryffindor merely blinks, eyes damp as they stare at the sleeping animal in his arms._ _

__With a sniffle, Luhan leans down to place a gentle kiss atop Bao's fluffy head._ _

__Suddenly the air around them seems to surge, crackling and shimmering like fireworks. The hairs on Baekhyun's arms prickle as they stand up straight and he feels really strange, like a storm is starting to gather around him. He turns to look at Jongdae and ask him if he feels it too, but he barely opens his mouth before a shocked and sudden yell has him looking towards his other friends instead._ _

__Luhan has leapt up from his chair, eyes wide and mouth open in a gasp. Looking down, Baekhyun then notices that the box in his hands has started to rattle. It shakes and shudders, jumping around in Luhan's grasp as the older student struggles to keep it still. "What's going on?" Jongdae asks, his voice laced with panic as he takes a few steps backwards, but no one blesses his question with an answer. They're all too busy staring at the shaking box to hear him._ _

__At that moment, just when it begins to slip from his fingers, the once-still Bao suddenly leaps out of the box, dashes through the air like a fuzzy brown lightning bolt, and lands on all four paws on the stone floor like a professional acrobat finishing a complicated routine._ _

__Bao's awake?!_ _

__"Merlin's beard!" Minseok startles, tipping backwards in his chair so far he ends up tumbling out of it, landing on the hard stone floor with a pained grunt. No one moves to help him. They're struck dumb with shock, all to stunned to do or say anything. Baekhyun's mind is swirling with so many questions that he feels dizzy, and he rubs his eyes to check that he isn't actually going insane because _Bao just woke up what the fuck._ __

____

__"B-Bao?" Luhan stutters. He looks like he's just seen a ghost, his face a strange mixture of sickly grey and brilliant red. He's stood with his hands out in front of him as if the box is still in his hand, fingers twitching around invisible cardboard walls. "How did you- what just- what?"_ _

____

__"What the fuck just happened?" Baekhyun shrieks, jumping two steps back in shock. He can't take his eyes off the fluffy beast as she prowls around the table on wobbly, tired legs. Just a second ago she had been as stiff as a rock, and now she's the most alive he's ever seen her! The prickling in the air has mostly disappeared but the hairs on the back of his neck are still standing strong, and his runs a hand over them in an attempt to calm himself and his racing heart down._ _

____

__Beside him, Jongdae's arms shoot up into the air so fast his elbows crack like a whip. "The kiss!" he cries suddenly, excitement blooming across his face in the form of a dazzling grin. He points at Luhan with a flapping hand. "You must have broken the effects of the potion when you kissed her head!"_ _

____

__"What- how?" grumbles Minseok on the other side of the table. He's still on the floor, subtly edging away from Bao on his bottom as she tip toes towards him to sniff at his shoes. "I thought you said the potion only worked on your true love. Luhan loves her very much, I'm sure, but he's not in love with her. At least I hope not."_ _

____

__In his shocked state, Luhan somehow manages to hit his friend in the face with a quill._ _

____

__"I don't know. It was a very old book, the definitions might be a bit outdated" Jongdae replies through his sniggers. "And hey, love doesn't have to be romantic. True, unconditional love can come from anyone or anywhere, I guess."_ _

____

__"Magic is fucking weird," Minseok frowns._ _

____

__On the floor, Bao stretches and yawns, her long bushy tail flicking from side to side in the orange light of the window. Besides a little ruffling of her usually-exquisite fur she looks perfectly normal, and not like she's been in a magically induced coma under a teenage boy's bed for several days. With a shake of her head and a hearty chirp, she saunters over to her owner and nuzzles against his legs, lovingly brushing her head against his knees and curling her tail around his calves like ivy climbing a tree._ _

____

__Eyes glistening, Luhan scoops her up and squeezes her close. Bao settles against him nicely, purring gently, and Luhan's lips sound out silent and illegible words. He must be too bewildered to say anything, and no one blames him. Minseok's staring at Bao from the floor like she'll drop like a stone again any second and Jongdae looks like he's about to explode he's vibrating so much._ _

____

__"Don't you see?" the young Gryffindor beams, turning to Baekhyun with sparkling eyes and an even more incredible smile. "This is brilliant! We now know for a fact that Chanyeol _was_ poisoned with the Schneewitten Elixir and that a kiss from someone he loves _will_ break its effects and wake him up." _ _

____

__Baekhyun can't help but smile back. "We've been right this whole time!" he laughs, hopping on the balls of his feet. "Everything we've done for the past month hasn't been for no reason. We're one step closer to making Chanyeol well again."_ _

____

__"But there's still a big problem," Minseok pipes up. He has scrambled up from the floor and is dusting off his robes as he fixes the two young boys with a concerned frown. "We don't know who poisoned him."_ _

____

__"Or why they would want to in the first place," adds Luhan._ _

____

__Oh. Of course. In all their excitement, they had completely forgotten all about the reason they were even in this mess. As if someone had just poured a bucket of icy water all over them, Baekhyun and Jongdae's shoulders instantly sag. The brilliance of their hopeful expressions is gone in an instant only to be replaced with bitter, somber scowls._ _

____

__“We need to find this person as soon as we can," Minseok says, moving to sit back down in his chair. "Before someone else gets hurt."_ _

____

__They all nod in agreement. Now that they know for sure how Chanyeol got sick, they can use the information to figure out who is responsible. They have already caused a significant amount of harm already using some very old, very dangerous magic; who's to say they wouldn't do it again?_ _

____

__"Who do you think it could be?" asks Luhan, Bao still nestled in his arms like a doll, "do you have any ideas?"_ _

____

__"Whoever poisoned him must know Chanyeol well enough to know what his favourite food is," he says slowly, pensively. "A cherry pie isn't exactly the first thing someone would think of to give as a gift. It's rather obscure, isn't it? So they must have known it was of some significance to him, else they would have gone for something more normal, like cauldron cakes or something." He rubs the back of his neck. "His favourite food is not really a fact any random person would instinctively know, you know?"_ _

____

__"So you're saying you think they're someone close to him? A classmate, or a friend?" asks Minseok._ _

____

__Jongdae sighs, and he looks so defeated. "Most likely," he replies. It's a harrowing thought, one that hangs in the air like the suffocating stank of rotting fruit._ _

____

__"Sweet Merlin," Luhan curses, dropping Bao to the floor when she starts wriggling. He runs his hands through his hair and sighs loudly, his voice dripping in disbelief. “This is so fucked up. I don't even know what to say.”_ _

____

__“Chanyeol knows so many people," whines Jongdae. "It could literally be anyone."_ _

____

__"Are you sure there isn't-"_ _

____

__“What’s going on here?”_ _

____

__Baekhyun shrieks like a banshee and leaps about three feet in the air at the sound of the voice behind him, so close he could feel their breath rustle the hairs on his head. He trips over his own feet and tumbles over, crashing into Jongdae, who lets out a cry of his own that turns into a pained grunt when he ends up whacking his head on the corner of a nearby bookshelf. He struggles to stop himself from falling on his friend any more by gripping onto the edge of the desk, and when he finally rights himself he spins around to confront the person who had sneakily crept up behind him._ _

____

__"What the hell do you-" he starts to grumble before he comes face to chest with none other than Kris Wu, Slytherin quidditch captain and least student-looking student in the whole of Scotland. Baekhyun instantly stops mid-sentence and replaces his confrontational scowl with one glazed in warmth and nonchalance as he leaps backwards to pull more space between them._ _

____

__“Hey there, Kris," he laughs awkwardly. Kris may be a relatively nice guy, but he's seen how the Slytherin commands his team and the thought of being on his bad side is incredibly unappealing. "Nothing, nothing is going on. Nothing at all.” He clears his throat. "How you doing?"_ _

____

__He can practically hear Jongdae rolling his eyes at him behind his back._ _

____

__"Hi, Kris," Minseok says, sounding equal parts exhausted and amused. He crosses his arms and fixes the taller boy with a raised and unimpressed eyebrow. "You're like an hour late."_ _

____

__"I was helping my seeker fix his form," Kris mumbles, walking over to the desk and dropping his bag down onto it. He starts to take parchment and quills out from his bag, and Baekhyun realises that he was supposed to be studying with them. Since when did the three captains form a study group? Was the Hufflepuff captain in on it as well? "I knew you'd just start without me anyway so I figured you wouldn't mind."_ _

____

__Minseok looks like he very much does mind, but he doesn't say anything._ _

____

__The atmosphere is incredibly tense as Kris continues to unload his bag. The four boys stare at each other over his hunched frame, non-verbally asking a flurry of panicked questions. How long had he been standing there? How much of their conversation did he overhear? Would he ask them about it? What would they say? What are they going to do?!_ _

____

__After a tense minute or so, the tall Slytherin finishes emptying his bag and goes to sit down. He's just above the chair when he suddenly pauses, hovering momentarily before pointing at the object in the middle of the table, brow furrowed._ _

____

__“Is that a cherry pie?”_ _

____

__“…Yes," Jongdae says after an awkwardly long pause. When Kris reaches out a hand to take it, Jongdae launches himself across the distance between them and snatches it out of the older boy's reach. "But don’t eat it! It went off ages ago." He hides it behind his back, smiling innocently. "Don’t want you to get sick.”_ _

____

__Sitting down, Kris grimaces. He doesn't seem suspicious of Jongdae's strange actions, which is good. “It’s not the one Chanyeol got last month, is it?" the Slytherin frowns, "cause that would be disgusting." Bao paws at his leg and he bends down to give her a scratch behind her ears. "Also food isn’t allowed in the library so I’d get rid of it quickly if you aren’t going to eat it.”_ _

____

__Kris' words hit him so fast he almost knocks himself over again. “What did you say?” Baekhyun gasps, his heart beating like a drum in his chest._ _

____

__“Food isn’t allowed in the-“_ _

____

__“No, not that. Chanyeol got a pie a month ago?”_ _

____

__“Yeah. I bumped into him on my way back from the library and some girl was giving him a pie." He shrugs his shoulders. "An odd gift but oh well.”_ _

____

__No way. There's really no way. In his desperation for answers he must be hearing things. He looks at his friends and sees them all staring at Kris like he's grown five heads, confirming that he wasn't going insane. Kris knew who poisoned Chanyeol. He had seen it happen right in front of him. Baekhyun's palms begin to sweat and his shoulders feel heavy as his back muscles tighten in anticipation._ _

____

__“Was he in his quidditch kit?” presses Jongdae. He looks how Baekhyun feels, all wide eyes and hair messy from running his hands through it so much, like a bolt of lightning has coursed through them both and left them buzzing._ _

____

__“Um, I think so," Kris hums in reply. "I remember him mentioning something about practise being over."_ _

____

__“Would you be able to recognise who the girl was?” asks Luhan._ _

____

__“Potentially. It was a while ago but I think I could.”_ _

____

__"Are you sure?"_ _

____

__"Yes I'm- what’s with all the questions?” Kris snaps, casting curious glances at his friends through narrowed eyes. "You're all acting really weird. What's going on?"_ _

____

__Baekhyun and Jongdae turn to look at each other. This is it, they think. The thing they have been searching for, the answer to all their questions, is right in front of them. With Kris’ help they can put a stop to this madness and find the person who hurt their best friend. Jongdae’s eyes seem to sparkle and Baekhyun’s fists clench tightly, sobered for the first time in many, many weeks._ _

____

__“Kris," Baekhyun says. "We need to tell you something.”_ _

____

__

____

__~_ _

____

__

____

__There are less students out than usual when Jongdae and Baekhyun enter the Great Hall for breakfast. It's not an uncommon occurrence the day after Halloween, with students are still feeling full from yesterday's dinner and therefore more likely to stay in their dorms before classes start, but it is inconvenient. They send each other mildly peeved looks before shuffling over to their usual spot in the middle of the Gryffindor table, unable to stop their eyes from glancing at the students around them. After all, any one of them could be the girl responsible for Chanyeol's sickness. They try not to look too suspicious as they sit down in silence, thighs bumping against each other under the table._ _

____

__In the hour or so they had left in the library before it closed, the group had decided to wait until morning to confront the girl Kris had seen with Chanyeol all those weeks ago. As eager as they all were to find out the truth behind this series of unfortunate events, they knew that causing a scene in the middle of the Halloween feast would create more problems than it would solve. With the whole school under the watchful eyes of the professors, they'd be flat on their arses and out of the castle before they even left their seats! The older students insisted on keeping it a private affair, and the young Gryffindors reluctantly agreed. Going in guns (or rather, wands) blazing would do them very little favours indeed._ _

____

__Jongdae's fingers tap nervously on the edge of the table. The table is spread from end to end with plates of delicious food but he doesn’t feel like eating any of it. Baekhyun, however, is already tearing into a bread roll and shoving as much of it as he can into his little mouth, smacking his lips together as he chews loudly and unabashed. Jongdae elbows him in the ribs in an attempt to get him to stop, but in typical fashion Baekhyun just chews even louder, picking off a chunk of bread to flick it at Jongdae's face in retaliation._ _

____

__The younger Gryffindor is just reaching for a roll of his own to throw back when Minseok and Luhan arrive, settling down on the bench across from them on the other side of the table. Luhan strikes up a conversation about the weather while Minseok fills up the plate in front of him, spacing out the scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, and toast so that none of them are touching each other. He slides the plate across the table, and it bumps off of Jongdae's fingers when it lands right in front of him. Jongdae raises a questioning brow, but his cousin isn't looking at him, too busy spooning black pudding onto another plate._ _

____

__With a sigh, Jongdae picks up his knife and fork and starts to eat. His cousin knows him too well, it seems._ _

____

__Time ticks on slowly. More students start to file into the Great Hall, and with every one that walks through the giant wooden doors the more awkward and shifty the four boys get. They try to stifle the tension that has settled around them by talking about everything but The Plan; Jongdae asks Luhan how Bao is doing and Minseok chastises Baekhyun for eating with his mouth open and getting ketchup on his tie. With only half an hour left before breakfast ends - and still no sign of Kris - they quickly come to face the reality that they might not be able to get this over and done with before classes start._ _

____

__It was always a possibility that they wouldn't be able to find this mysterious girl right off the bat, but Jongdae can't help but feel a little disappointed. The sooner this nightmare is over the better._ _

____

__They're just about to call it quits when finally, with fifteen minutes to spare, Kris saunters through the door. Minseok looks like he's seriously considering thwacking the Slytherin over the head with a bread basket for being so late, but Jongdae is too relieved to share in his annoyance. There's still time, he thinks, and he looks down at his food and pokes at it with his fork as Kris grabs a water jug and pours himself a drink, wondering how long it will take Kris to recognise the girl he had seen with Chanyeol on that fateful day._ _

____

__The answer, it seems, is seconds._ _

____

__"Found her."_ _

____

__Jongdae's heart jumps into his throat. So they won't have to wait until lunch after all. "Where is she?" he mumbles, picking at his food as nonchalantly as he can._ _

____

__"Hufflepuff table. Near the middle. First or second year. Ravenclaw. Black hair in pigtails. She's eating pancakes."_ _

____

__Taking a deep breath, Jongdae lifts his head up in feign of asking Minseok a question. His eyes flicker over to the Hufflepuff table, scanning it for the girl that fits Kris' description._ _

____

__He finds her in a matter of seconds, huddled between a small group of friends that look awfully familiar, and it takes him a few moments to recognise her as one of the small army of girls that stalk Jongin and his friends around the castle. In fact she was there behind a tree when Jongdae and Baekhyun went to ask the young seeker for his help four days ago._ _

____

__What would he have done back then if he had known that the person they were looking for was mere metres away? He tries not to dwell on it as he leans over to his right to grab a spoonful of baked beans, whispering Kris' message into Baekhyun's ear._ _

____

__They rise at the same time, stumbling up from the benches and hitching their school bags onto their shoulders. Upon seeing this, Minseok and Luhan stand up as well, the latter taking a second to stack up all the dirty plates and cutlery and wipe clean the little puddle of orange juice Baekhyun had made several minutes ago._ _

____

__They head in opposite directions; the two sixth years head right towards the entrance hall, while Minseok and Luhan turn left, both couples circling around each end of the long wooden table to meet the girl on both sides. They had planned this out meticulously, each step covered in the most detail possible to ensure that she wouldn't be able to escape. She may be several years younger than them but she has already caused some serious magical damage to completely innocent people. The worst thing they could do is underestimate her, especially when so much is a stake._ _

____

__They're a few metres away when the girl suddenly looks up and away from her friends. Her face instantly blanches at the sight of Baekhyun and Jongdae coming towards her and she scrambles up from the bench, not bothering to grab her bag before she attempts to scuttle away in the opposite direction. Jongdae sees Baekhyun smirk out the corner of his eye when she runs straight into Minseok's chest, jumping away from him with a little yelp and squeaking out an apology before spinning around to run the other way._ _

____

__She only manages to take a few steps before Luhan's hand taps her on the shoulder, making her freeze on the spot. When Baekhyun and Jongdae come to a stop in front of her she is well and truly trapped._ _

____

__“Excuse me," Luhan says in a polite but firm manner. "I was wondering if we could borrow you for a second.”_ _

____

__“It wasn’t me!”_ _

____

__At the sound of her frightened voice, Luhan slams his mouth shut. Across from him and behind her back, Baekhyun's brow furrows. “What?” he asks, confused. It wasn't her? What does she mean by that?_ _

____

__“I didn’t do it!" she replies with a terrified squeak. "My brother told me to give him the pie and I did, I didn’t do anything to him, I swear! If I knew your friend would get sick I wouldn’t have done it! I'm sorry!”_ _

____

__“Your brother? Who’s your-“_ _

____

__Before he can finish his sentence, a flash of bright light hits him straight in the shoulder, sending him crashing to the stone floor. Baekhyun's arm is growing before he even hits the ground, stretching like dough to almost twice its normal size and flopping around in all directions like a limp noodle as he tries to lift it. Jongdae freezes in place, staring at his friend's quickly distorting body in horror. What on earth just happened?_ _

____

__“Behind you!” Baekhyun cries, and Jongdae breaks out of his daze just in time to duck as another hex comes shooting over his head. It explodes against the far wall in a burst of icy blue, and the group of students below scream as they are sprinkled with sparks. Jumping back up, he spins around to search the Great Hall for the attacker. Everyone is either sat down or milling between the aisles, but there is one person that stands out amongst the rest. They’re running away from the group and towards the Entrance Hall, wand in hand and Gryffindor robes billowing out behind them. They turn to look over their shoulder, most likely to see if they are being followed, and Jongdae almost drops his wand when he sees who it is, shock, betrayal and hatred coursing through his veins so violently that he feels the urge to vomit all over his shoes._ _

____

__It’s Shim Jaewon, the boy who replaced Chanyeol on the quidditch team._ _

____

__Jongdae doesn't even think before taking off after his fellow Gryffindor as fast as his can, pushing and shoving through the small groups of students that are unfortunate enough to be loitering in the aisles at that moment. "You bastard!" he growls, a deep and terrible sound, and he barely hears the sound of his own name being called somewhere behind him as he breaks through the crowd and untangles his wand from within his robes. All this time, all this goddamn time, it was Jaewon who was responsible for poisoning Chanyeol and sending him to sleep. Shim Jaewon, seventh year Gryffindor, who is to play by Jongdae's side in the first match of the year that week. He seemed to nice, so agreeable to the point that Jongdae felt guilty for protesting to replace Chanyeol's position so harshly. The asshole had even given his condolences to him after practise had ended. Jongdae is so enraged that tears start to prickle in the corner of his eyes, and he wipes them away angrily as he ducks out of the Great Hall and breaks into a sprint, hell bent on teaching Jaewon a lesson he'll never forget._ _

____

__He can hear footsteps behind him as he dashes across the Entrance Hall and towards where Jaewon is sprinting up the Grand Staircase. Jongdae elbows a random Ravenclaw out of the way as another spell comes flying through the air, missing them both by inches. Mumbling a quick apology to the poor student, Jongdae rushes forwards and raises his wand, shouting the first spell that comes to his mind._ _

____

"Densaugeo!" 

____

__Violet light shoots from his wand and hit the step just below Jaewon's foot, missing his target by far too much. Cursing, Jongdae chases after him, narrowly avoiding the hex that Jaewon sends his way by ducking behind the nearest bannister._ _

____

__"Impedimenta!"_ _

____

__Jongdae recognises Minseok's voice as a flash of red shoots past him, only to be successfully deflected by Jaewon. He uses the moment of distraction to run up the first and second staircase before they move and fire as many spells as he can think of in Jaewon's direction, hoping that at least one of them will hit. Minseok covers him when he runs out of breath, crouching behind the third stair bannister. Looking over his shoulder, he can see that Luhan and Baekhyun are close behind, the latter having draped his two-metre long arm around his neck like a macabre scarf. Kris rounds the corner and fires a jinx that hits Jaewon in the back of his leg, sending him tumbling down the stairs like a rag doll._ _

____

__Jongdae rejoices for all of five seconds before Jaewon is up on his feet and sprinting up the stairs again, hiding behind the bannister of the fourth staircase as it moves away from them, blocking him from view._ _

____

__"Why, Jaewon?" Luhan yells from the first staircase, his voice dripping in anger and disgust. He fires a spell that hits the stone just above Jaewon's head, making him scamper away as purple sparks fly around him. Jongdae runs up onto the third staircase when it aligns with the second, Minseok coming up behind him. "Why did you do it?"_ _

____

__"I don't know what you're talking about!" Jaewon shouts as he throws a spell over the edge of the bannister. It hits Luhan in the chest and sends the captain flying backwards into Kris, who had reached the staircase at the most inopportune moment. Baekhyun runs up the steps and retaliates with a jinx that makes Jaewon shriek as the skin of his arms suddenly bursts into a flurry of horrendously red and purple boils. With a horrified yelp, the pimpled Gryffindor scampers up the nearest staircase and disappears through the entrance to the fourth floor corridor._ _

____

__Jongdae and Minseok race up the staircase, wands gripped tightly in their hands as they make their way up to the fourth floor. Following Jaewon, they enter the fourth floor corridor just as the rogue Gryffindor is about to turn the corner at the far end and vanish from sight completely. With the swish of his wand, Minseok has Jaewon freezing mid-run like a statue, instantly stopping him in his tracks. He topples over and lands on his face with a grunt, and Jongdae knows for sure that they have finally caught him. They make their way over, thankful that the corridor was mostly empty by the time they got there. Who knows what damage they could have done had they arrived just a few minutes earlier._ _

____

__Jaewon stares up at them with wide eyes as they come to a stop beside him. When Minseok removes the effects of his Petrificus Totalus charm with just the single swish of his wand, he immediately goes to kick the Ravenclaw in the shins. Minseok barely has to move to avoid it, and he bends down to grab the Gryffindor by his collar and heave him up onto his feet._ _

____

__A few metres away sits Jaewon’s wand, the object having fallen from his hand as he fell. Jongdae picks it up as Jaewon writhes in Minseok’s grip, scratching at Minseok’s fist with his nails in an attempt to escape. Minseok merely swings him around and presses him to the wall, pointing his wand at the boy’s throat._ _

____

__"There's no point trying to get away, Jaewon," Minseok says. “You’ve already lost."_ _

____

__At the sound of footsteps behind them, Jongdae looks over his shoulder to see Luhan, Kris and Baekhyun running up to meet them, the latter arm still hanging around his shoulders. “Sorry we took so long,” Luhan says dryly as he side eyes Baekhyun. “Someone thought it would be funny to trip over their own arm.”_ _

____

__“Didn’t do it on purpose,” Baekhyun mumbles, looking rather sheepish. He shrugs an apology at Jongdae and Minseok before turning his eyes on the boy pressed against the wall under the Ravenclaw’s fist. “You can thank this asshole for that.”_ _

____

__“I haven't done anything,” Jaewon snaps. His eyes betray a level of panic that is damning. “You have no proof.”_ _

____

__“Oh, we have proof,” Jongdae says, triumph laced into every word. “Enough proof to make sure you never hurt any innocent people ever again.”_ _

____

__Jaewon opens his mouth to reply, but whatever words that were about to come out are cut off when every single one of them is lifted off their feet and sent hurling backwards, slamming against the stone walls with a crash. Pain ripples up and down Jongdae's spine. When he tries to stand up he realises that he is pinned to the wall, held against the cold stone by an invisible force. All along the corridor walls, his friends are stuck as well, struggling against invisible bonds._ _

____

__Grunting in pain beside him, Minseok lifts his wand to set them free, but that too, along with everyone else's wands, ends up flying through the air away from them. Jongdae turns his head to see where it went, only for his blood to run cold at the sight of Junmyeon and Yixing stood about halfway down the corridor, the former's usually warm eyes now burning with vicious intensity._ _

____

__Oh Merlin, not again._ _

____

__“What the bloody hell is going on here?”_ _

____

__For what seems like hours, no one moves. No one speaks. Jongdae can't be sure he's even breathing. What he is sure of, however, is that he is terrified. Junmyeon is practically shaking with distress, the many wands in his hands threatening to snap at any second with how tight his tiny hands are curled into fists. Steam might as well be billowing from his ears. To see his friends breaking so many rules must be a rather traumatic experience for the poor Head Boy._ _

____

__Adjacent from him, held down by Junmyeon's spell as opposed to Minseok's strength, Jaewon starts to protest. Despite the pressure of Junmyeon's burning gaze, Baekhyun makes sure he gets his word in first._ _

____

__“Jae Won poisoned Chanyeol-"_ _

____

__"And my fucking cat!" adds Luhan._ _

____

__"-he tricked him into eating a pie spiked with sleeping potion."_ _

____

__“Fuck you, that's a lie!” snaps Jaewon. He turns to Junmyeon with eyes wide and pleading. "They were harassing my sister so I jumped in to help her and they attacked me. I have no idea what they're on about!"_ _

____

__"You're the liar," Baekhyun yells, "you're a guilty as they come!"_ _

____

__Jaewon curses back a rely, and then everyone is screaming and shouting, all six students' voices raised so loudly that they start to ring in the quiet of the corridor. Jongdae can barely hear his own thoughts over Minseok throwing in his two cents to defend Luhan, let alone the curses and insults he's barking out himself. Their scrimmaging doesn't last long before Junmyeon waves his wand and the six of them are forced to be silent, their mouths gagged._ _

____

__“Enough!" Junmyeon shouts. "This is absolutely ridiculous. You've broken at least a dozen school rules, endangered innocent students, even full on injured them in some cases-," he eyes Baekhyun's floppy arm and Jaewon's blistered skin warily, "-and yet you still insist on acting like complete and utter fools. Some of you are in line to work at the Ministry next year, and this is how I see you behaving? You are wizards, not children. This is entirely unacceptable and you should all be ashamed of yourselves."_ _

____

__A long pause follows. Jongdae wants to protest, but he says nothing. No one is brave enough to argue with the Head Boy after an outburst like that. Eventually Junmyeon lets out an exhausted sigh. With a flourish of his wand, the charm keeping the students stuck to the wall is lifted. The Head Boy fixes them with a dangerous look. "Would you all follow me, please.”_ _

____

__It's a command, not a request. Junmyeon waits until everyone has stood up and dusted themselves off before turning around and heading deeper into the corridor. Slowly, they all follow after him, Yixing waiting at the side until the last person has passed to bring up the rear. Jongdae shares a look with him as they shuffle onwards, one that he reads as a form of comfort. He shrugs defeatedly at the Hufflepuff before facing forwards again, leaning in to Baekhyun to help the latter maintain his balance with his overgrown limb._ _

____

__They walk for a few minutes before Junmyeon comes to a stop outside an empty classroom. He opens the door and gestures for everyone to head inside. Jaewon, who had been practically glued to the Head Boy's side the entire time, shuffles in quickly whilst the rest of them follow suit, all keeping their heads down to avoid Junmyeon's disapproving eyes._ _

____

__The classroom is on the small side, most likely used for one-on-one or small group sessions with a tutor in private. Baekhyun and Jaewon are forced into chairs by Yixing (Baekhyun near the door and Jaewon in the corner of the room, as far away from everyone else as possible) and Jongdae takes one next to his best friend, bumping his ankle against Baekhyun's own. Everyone else remains standing; Minseok and Luhan lean against the wall, and Kris situates himself just behind Jaewon, his presence heavy on the Gryffindor's shoulders. Junmyeon stands right next to the door, behind Baekhyun, and Yixing does the same on the other side. Yixing flicks his wand, and the resounding click that echoes in the tiny room tells Jongdae that the door is now locked._ _

____

__There's no going back now._ _

____

__Junmyeon surveys the room like a general inspecting his troops. “You have five minutes," he says once the room is settled. "I don’t care who it is, but someone had better tell me what the bloody hell is going on to justify a six person duel on school grounds before I get the Headmistress involved.”_ _

____

__There are a few beats of nothing but the sound of people talking beyond the door before Jongdae bucks up the energy to speak first. “We found out how Chanyeol got sick," he says. "Jae Won poisoned him with a forbidden sleeping potion that-"_ _

____

__“That’s complete bollocks.”_ _

____

__“Liar!”_ _

____

__“Shut up!” Junmyeon snaps, smothering both Jaewon and Baekhyun into silence. When they seem to have gotten the message, he turns back to Jongdae. “Those are serious accusations. What proof do you have?”_ _

____

__"We found the potion in a book in the Restricted Section. And the pie he used to poison him under Chanyeol's bed. Luhan's cat had eaten some and got sick too, that's why she went missing."_ _

____

__Junmyeon looks at Luhan, who glumly nods his head. "It's true, Myeon. They brought her to me when they found her. She was in the dorms the whole time."_ _

____

__"Kris said he saw a girl giving Chanyeol a pie the day before he got sick, so we went to talk to her and she said her brother was the one who told her to give it to him-"_ _

____

__“Bullshit," says Jaewon, cutting Jongdae off. "I would never do such a thing! Why would I want to hurt someone I barely know?”_ _

____

__“Cause you’re a dickhead, that’s why.”_ _

____

__“Fuck you, Byun, stop talking out your arse!”_ _

____

__"A guilty man wouldn't run! Or attack random people for no reason!"_ _

____

__"You were harassing my sister, what else was I supposed to do-"_ _

____

__"Be quiet, all of you!" Junmyeon bellows. Sparks fly out from the ends of all their wands, still held tightly in his hands. The room is swallowed by silence, as if Junmyeon had charmed their mouths shut once again. The Head Boy runs his hands through his neatly styled hair and down his frowning face before turning back to his fellow students, sighing heavily. "Yixing, could you get Jaewon's sister for me, please?"_ _

____

__"Leave her out of this, she hasn't-"_ _

____

__Junmyeon fixes him with a look that shuts him up instantly. With a weak smile, Yixing unlocks the door and slips out of the room._ _

____

__It doesn't take long for Yixing to return, ten minutes at most. The time is filled with Baekhyun and Jongdae's retelling of the past month and their efforts to discover the truth behind Chanyeol's mysterious illness, an almost exact rendition of the one they told Minseok and Luhan the previous day, upon Junmyeon's request. The Head Boy doesn't say a word the whole time. He doesn't even react when they mention kissing Chanyeol themselves, much to their surprise. He looks drained, however, Jongdae thinks, taking note of the lightly purpling rings on the Ravenclaw's cheeks and eyes._ _

____

__A knock at the door signals Yixing's return before the Hufflepuff enters, Jaewon's sister pressed to his side. She looks like a rabbit caught in headlights, clutching tightly to Yixing's robes and staring at her shoes like they're the most interesting thing she's ever seen. Guilt swirls in Jongdae and Baekhyun's guts; they had ambushed her just minutes ago, and now she was being forced into the same room as them. No wonder she's so frightened._ _

____

__When the door clicks shut, Junmyeon bends down a little, bringing himself closer to her height. "What's your name?" he asks, his voice soft and reassuring. The girl looks up at him through wet eyelashes and sniffles a little before swallowing the lump in her throat._ _

____

__"J-Jae-eun," she stutters quietly._ _

____

__"Hi, Jae-eun," Junmyeon says with a smile. Always so charming, even in a situation as sensitive as this. "Don't worry, you're not in trouble. We just want to ask you a few questions."_ _

____

__There's a brief pause before Jae-eun nods her head timidly, curling deeper into Yixing's side. Junmyeon sends her another soft, thankful smile before turning to face the whole room, straightening his back as he fixes them with a stern expression._ _

____

__"These boys say that you were seen giving Park Chanyeol a pie several weeks ago. Is that true?"_ _

____

__It's a while before Jae-eun replies. "Yes," she says after a few seconds, her voice just loud enough for everyone to hear._ _

____

__Junmyeon nods slowly. "Why did you give it to him?" he asks._ _

____

__"Jaewon asked me to."_ _

____

__At this, Jaewon starts to shift uncomfortably. He looks like he is about to protest, taking a step towards his sister with his hands held out in front of him defensively, but a simple hand on the shoulder from Kris keeps him from moving any further. Junmyeon side-eyes the interaction briefly before turning back to the matter at hand._ _

____

__"Did he say why?" he asks._ _

____

__A pause. Jae-eun looks at her brother before shaking her head._ _

____

__"Did you know that it was spiked?"_ _

____

__Once again, she shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she squeaks, hanging her head low as her shoulders start to shake. "I didn't want to make him sick. If I knew, I wouldn't have…"_ _

____

__She starts to sob, and it quickly becomes clear that they won't be able to get much more out of her. She must be terrified, surrounded by older boys and speaking out against her own brother. Jongdae feels bad for bringing her into this, but her word is important in making sure Jaewon doesn't get away scot free. Junmyeon sighs and runs his hands through his hair as he observes the quivering girl._ _

____

__"Thank you for your help," he smiles softly. "Yixing, why don't you take Jae-eun to the Hospital Wing. I think some Calming Draught will do her some good."_ _

____

__With a reserved smile and cautious glance towards the hunched over figure in the corner, Yixing leads the crying girl out of the room. For a second the room is filled with the chattering and laughter of the world outside, but then the door clicks shut, and the room is smothered in silence once again._ _

____

__"There’s no point lying now, Jae Won," says Baekhyun, just when the quiet becomes unbearable. He sounds tired, like he's just run a marathon, and Jongdae feels the same. "You might as well tell us the truth.”_ _

____

__Until now, Jaewon had been mostly unreadable. He had looked panicked at times, annoyed at others, but overall his face betrayed no major emotion to give away what he was thinking. But now he looks furious, his cheeks red and eyes dark like storm clouds as he glares at Jongdae and his friends with a look of pure anger. “How dare you use my sister against me,” he snarls, hands shaking. "How dare you!"_ _

____

__“Why did you do it?" Luhan ignores him. "He’s never done anything to hurt you.”_ _

____

__At this, Jaewon scoffs. “Me, no," the boy hisses. His bitterness doesn't go unnoticed, and Jongdae finds himself sharing wary glances with the people around him. Sweat trickles down his spine, and he feels nervous, but doesn't quite know why._ _

____

__“Then what?" questions Minseok. His eyes narrow. "What has he done, who has he hurt?”_ _

____

__“He’s done nothing, that’s the point," Jaewon spits. The tone of his voice is venomous, and it startles Jongdae so much he takes a step back. "He’s a useless waste of space and a burden to everyone in our house.”_ _

____

__“And why would that be?” asks Junmyeon._ _

____

__“Ever since he’s been on the team, Gryffindor has lost more matches than ever. We’ve had to give away the House Cup more times than I can count, all because of him.”_ _

____

__The realisation strikes Jongdae like a slap to the face. His heart seems to shudder in his chest and he feels sick, terribly, terribly sick, like his stomach is full of slugs and eels. Looking around, he knows he isn't the only one. Baekhyun's face is frozen in a picture of pure horror, eyes impossibly wide and mouth hanging open like a corpse, and Luhan looks like he is seconds away from throttling Jaewon with his bare hands, if not for Minseok's hand wrapped around his forearm. Even Junmyeon looks disturbed, gripping the back of Baekhyun's chair so hard his knuckles have turned white._ _

____

__“Quidditch?" Jongdae chokes. "You did this…because of quidditch?”_ _

____

__Jaewon scowls at him, unabashed. “He’s the worst player the team has ever seen," the Gryffindor hisses. "He can barely sit on a broom, let alone hit a bludger. The only reason he’s even on the team is because he’s friends with the captain." He turns to Luhan and sneers disdainfully, almost wickedly. "And I’m not the only person that thinks this, you know. Everyone knows you have favourites.”_ _

____

__Minseok just manages to catch Luhan as the latter suddenly lunges forwards. “I should hex your nose right off your face, you piece of shit!" the older Gryffindor growls as he fights against the hands holding him back. Even without his wand he still looks like he could beat Jaewon to pulp with his bare hands, or die trying. Not even Junmyeon makes an effort to discourage him; the Head Boy barely bats an eyelash at the unfolding scene. Jaewon at least has the intelligence to shrink away and keep his mouth shut until Minseok manages to restrain his friend by wrestling him into a chair._ _

____

__“I thought when Jongin joined everything would be fine, but Gryffindor were still completely humiliated last year. A toddler could have played better than Park did. He’s the worst member on the team and doesn’t deserve to be part of it.”_ _

____

__The way he spits Chanyeol's name like it's dirt in his mouth makes Jongdae's blood boil. “And you do?" he snaps, drawing the attention of the room. "Is this why you did it? So you could take his place?”_ _

____

__“I’m five times the player he is," Jaewon drawls. "You know it’s true. You should be thankful you have me instead of him." The look of smug pride on his face makes Jongdae’s stomach churn. "At least Gryffindor stands a chance of winning now.”_ _

____

__“Why not just hex him?” asks Kris. “Or curse his broom? Why poison him with a forbidden sleeping potion, why go to that extreme?”_ _

____

__“I needed to get him off the team for good. I’m no murderer, I don’t want him dead, just out of commission. I needed something more than just a hex, so I did some digging and when I found that elixir, I knew I had struck gold. It was powerful and obscure enough that I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about him bouncing back before I passed tryouts. All I had to do was keep him asleep until we won the cup and then I’d give him the antidote. I’d show everyone how much better off we are without him.”_ _

____

__For a long time, no one says anything. Jongdae can feel acid in his throat. "You're- you're insane," says Luhan, "you're actually insane," and Jongdae thinks that truer words have never before been said. He can feel Baekhyun shaking beside him, his legs bouncing out of rhythm and making the legs of his chair rattle on the ground, but whether it's because of anxiety or rage, Jongdae isn't sure. He wants to comfort him but he doesn't think he can move, too shocked to do anything but stare in horror at the boy across from him._ _

____

__"You would willingly murder an innocent kid," he finds himself saying, although his voice sounds funny to his ears, like he's underwater, "just to play quidditch?"_ _

____

__Jaewon looks at him like he's stupid. "I haven't murdered anyone," he says. "Park will be perfectly fine when you get someone to kiss him. You said so yourself-"_ _

____

__"You idiot," Baekhyun snaps suddenly, rising from his chair. Tears have started to bead in the corners of his eyes, spilling over as his entire body quakes. "Haven't you been listening this entire time? We cannot find the person to break the effects of the potion. It is literally impossible."_ _

____

__"You're wrong," Jaewon shouts. The smugness on his face has started to ripple away, replaced with fear when the reality behind Baekhyun's words is slowly realised. "There's definitely a cure, there's-"_ _

____

__"Shut up!" Baekhyun is screaming now, his voice broken and hoarse, and it tears through Jongdae's heart like a thousand sharp knives. "There is no antidote. There is no cure. Chanyeol is as good as dead. He will die, and by the look of things, pretty soon. All because you wanted to make the team.”_ _

____

__Panic now seeps into Jaewon's features. “No. There’s always a cure." He turns to Junmyeon, hands out and pleading, as if sudden remorse would change his mind about what he had done. "I’m not a murderer. I promise!”_ _

____

__“I’ve heard enough," Junmyeon sighs. The Head Boy runs a hand through his hair and clears his throat, visibly shaken, almost disgusted. "Minseok, Kris, could you help me take Mr Shim to the Headmistress please?” he says finally._ _

____

__“No!" Jaewon shouts as Kris grabs him by the shoulders and drags him from his chair. "I’m not a murderer! I didn’t want to kill him! I didn’t mean it!” He writhes around in Kris' grip, swinging his legs at Minseok when the Ravenclaw helps to restrain him. “Stop, let me go! Let me go, I’m not a murderer! I just wanted to be on the team!”_ _

____

__They drag him kicking and screaming out into the corridor, Junmyeon leading the way. The remaining students file out to watch them, but neither Jongdae nor Baekhyun make any effort to move. Through the door, Jongdae can see Jaewon fighting against Kris and Minseok's combined strength, and it is clear that his efforts to get away are futile. They disappear from view, heading off down the corridor and away from the little classroom, but his panicked pleading still rings in the air, like the sound of distant funeral bells. The only other person with them is Yixing, who is standing in the doorway, staring at the two boys in a way that has Jongdae feeling somewhat worse than he already is._ _

____

__That's it, isn't it? It's over, for the most part. They've caught the person who made Chanyeol sick, and they know for such that they'll be punished for what they have done. Justice has been served. They should be happy, right?_ _

____

__Jongdae doesn't feel happy. Or angry, or sad, or relieved. He doesn't feel much of anything, really, besides tired. The battle may be over, but the war is still going strong. Chanyeol is still sick, they're no closer to bringing him home. Jongdae knows he should be happy, should be jumping for joy, and he desperately wants to be. But instead his shoulder sag and his head droops, and he sighs, exhausted and unsure what to do with himself._ _

____

__The classroom is eerily quiet, besides the chirping of the birds outside. For a long time all is still, but then Jongdae hears something beside him. He looks up to see that Baekhyun is crying, sniffling silently, and without saying a word he reaches down to slip their hands together. Baekhyun's hand is warm and a little sweaty, and Jongdae finds comfort in the way their fingers slot together, even though he can feel every sob that wracks through the boy beside him._ _

____

__“I understand how you feel," Yixing says. His voice low, soft, and warm, but there's an element of caution, or maybe pity, to his tone that has Jongdae looking up from his and Baekhyun's hands. "And he deserves whatever comes to him. But don’t forget he’s human too. His father is head beater for the Falmouth Falcons. I also hear he’s not the softest of men. There was probably a lot of pressure to make the team.”_ _

____

__“I don’t care," Baekhyun whispers. He sounds broken, and Jongdae squeezes him gently. "He hurt my best friend. Nothing will ever justify that.”_ _

____

__They remain there, hand in hand, until the sound of Jaewon's voice, and the gentle hum of the world outside, vanishes completely._ _

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a few things i thought i would mention:
> 
> \- in case you were wondering, Luhan's true love is definitely /not/ his cat lol. when i originally planned this fic, Bao was never supposed to wake up and it would be hinted that she died later on in the year, probably in the next couple weeks or so. after all it makes literally no sense that she would be woken by her true love seeing as the idea of 'true love' is a human thing and thus doesn't really apply to animals and pets. however, soon after i posted the last chapter of this story, two of my own cats passed away within weeks of each other. this is just one of several reasons why it took me so long to write this chapter, and i eventually decided that Bao should have a happy ending as much as the other characters. Luhan doesn't love his cat romantically or anything, it was just my way of keeping Bao in the story without messing with the plot so much. i hope it didn't cause too much confusion when you were reading or anything.
> 
> \- Shim Jaewon is a real dude. you may know him as Beatburger Jae (i think) or the guy that hangs out with Chanyeol in a lot of his studio vlives. he's also an SM choreographer. it's very clear that Jae and Chanyeol are very good friends irl, but i didn't know how/want to make any of the EXO members the villains of this story so i used Jae instead. he seems like a very lovely man! i'm sure he wouldn't want to hurt Chanyeol in any way. also as far as i'm aware he doesn't have a sister, so Jae-eun is completely made up.
> 
> \- this really isn't relevant at all, but Chanyeol/Baekhyun/Jongdae's other dorm mates are Jooheon and Namjoon (let's not question how there are so many korean kids in a british school), they get on well but they all have their own school lives and friends so they only really see each other at night and in the morning. Jooheon and Namjoon have been largely sympathetic about baekchen's situation and stay out the dorm as much as possible to give them space to themselves. how nice of them.
> 
> \- i'm not saying this fic ships baekchen......but some of you in the comments are very convincing.....they're definitely not getting together.....but i maybe put in a lot more than i ever intended to.....this is entirely you guys' fault....i hope you're happy....
> 
> this chapter is kinda a mess lol. i apologise if there are any mistakes, i wanted to get this out asap so i might have rushed a few sections. i know that a lot of you would have come here for a chansoo story only to receive 0.1% chansoo, but i can assure you that our boys WILL end up together in the near future. you'll just have to wait a little bit longer. i'm sorry about that.
> 
> i can't promise when the next update will be as i have major deadlines and exams cropping up at various times over the next couple months, so it will probably be some point after that. i hope you can all be patient with me!
> 
> as always, thank you for reading! please tell me what you think! feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://kokokysoo.tumblr.com/ask) or in the comments if you have any questions or simply just want to scream about stuff, i always reply and i'm always up for a chat!


	4. look at me as if it's the first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowee this one is a whopper. it's also an unbeta'd mess, so please tell me if there are any mistakes!!
> 
> happy reading !!

A few days after Jaewon is expelled, Gryffindor lose the first quidditch match of the year.

It's to be expected, really. With Jaewon having been removed from school grounds on the very day he was taken to the Headmistress, the team were a flier down with no one to fill the position. On the day of the game, they were silent and sombre as they made their way to the pitch, the reality of their situation hanging over them like a thick grey cloud. They had already accepted that the chances of them winning were slim to none, especially since Jongdae and Luhan were still shaken from the events that occurred earlier that week.

Understandably, changes were made to make it an even match. Because Gryffindor had only one beater, Kris opted to bench one of his own so the teams were of equal size. After appealing to Professor Liu, the flying teacher and quidditch referee, she agreed to only release one bludger when the game officially began. You don't have to be an ex-member of the Holyhead Harpies to realise that one beater against two bludgers would surely end in disaster. The team did their best, fought the hardest they could, but despite their best efforts they were no match for their Slytherin opponents. In the end they lost 50-200 points, with Sehun successfully catching the snitch before Jongin could even spot the brilliant gold flash of its reflection in the sunlight.

Jaewon's departure had left them fractured, uneasy, and even more so humiliated, especially after they were told the truth behind his expulsion, a mere day before the day of the match. Baekhyun and Jongdae knew they couldn't keep it a secret for much longer. Rumours had already started to echo down the stone walls of the castle. A six-person duel in the middle of breakfast isn't something most people would forget in a hurry, and soon the whole school knew that Jaewon had done something terrible enough to warrant permanent expulsion from school grounds. Luhan had asked if he could tell the team the truth, and the boys had little choice but to say yes. 

They keep out the part about Chanyeol’s true love, however. Some things must be kept secret after all.

In typical Hogwarts fashion, telling a few people results in the whole school now knowing the truth behind Chanyeol's sickness. Life for Baekhyun and Jongdae is even more chaotic then it was before. It's been a long time since anything remotely interesting or life-threatening has happened at Hogwarts, and for many students the idea of a six-person duel is simply fascinating. Instead of sad smiles and pitying looks, they are now badgered with questions and queries about what happened on that fateful morning. Kids of all ages (although mostly the younger ones) pester them during meals and in the corridors, wanting to know everything they can about the mysterious events surrounding Chanyeol's unending sleep.

It doesn't happen enough to fully hinder their day, but it is very, very annoying. Especially since some students have taken it upon themselves to come forward with 'evidence' to further bolster the case against Jaewon, evidence that is almost entirely useless and similarly unwelcome.

_"He was really weird, that Jaewon kid. Always alone, never had any friends. I knew there was something off with him."_

_"My friend's sister's boyfriend's brother said that he heard him mumble your friend's name in his sleep! He must have been completely obsessed!"_

_"He sat behind me in the library once. Heard him planning everything, the whole thing! Said that if I ever told anyone about what he was doing he would turn me into a blast-ended skrewt! I would have told the professors if I wasn't so scared for my life."_

There's only so many times that Baekhyun can stop Jongdae from aggressively calling bullshit before he starts to do so himself.

They aren't the only ones to be receiving a large amount of unwanted attention, however. It becomes obvious very quickly that Jaewon's sister’s involvement in her brother's schemes, despite being unaware of his real intentions, has earned her the scorn of her fellow students, particularly so from younger Gryffindors. The boys hardly ever see her in the corridors or at meals, and Jongin had told them that she no longer hangs around with her friends near the boathouse. When they do see her she is alone, her head down and eyes fixed to the floor as she ducks around groups of students that hurl insults at her as she passes. The boys can't help but feel guilty, even though they aren't the ones responsible for dragging her into something she had no part in in the first place.

(It's not all doom and gloom, though. The last time Baekhyun and Jongdae saw Jae-eun, she was eating lunch at the Ravenclaw table, nestled between Kris and Luhan, with Minseok sitting on the bench opposite. They must have noticed her being bullied as well. No one dared say anything nasty to her the entire time they were there. Jae-eun had been smiling for the first time in almost a week.)

As for Chanyeol himself, his condition hasn't changed much since the last time his friends visited him. He's a lot skinner than before, ribs and collar bones protruding from beneath his skin like pale ink through paper, and his jaw and upper lip are prickly with adolescent stubble and hair, but he's still asleep, still breathing like death, and to Baekhyun and Jongdae that's all that matters. They've taken to spending all their free time by his side again, sorting through the many letters and presents that have been left at his bedside since the news of his sickness went public. He's received all sorts of gifts, everything from brilliantly coloured flowers that hum calming melodies to promote healing, to boxes of delicious sweets that shadow even Baekhyun's impressive stock, to even handfuls of sickles and galleons, all from students and professors alike. 

There was even a present from a wizard in Peru, who had heard of Chanyeol's plight through his niece and wanted to offer his services in order to ease his suffering. The parcel contained a peculiar looking stone, carved with strange and mysterious runes that not even Miss Luna could translate, which, the man had explained in his letter, would help ease the tension in Chanyeol's mind and encourage pleasant dreams if placed under his pillow. They aren't quite sure if it's actually doing anything, but Jongdae swears that Chanyeol's cheeks look a little bit pinker than they did before, so they appreciate the gesture either way.

This is where Jongin finds them, huddled up on Chanyeol's bed at the far end of the Hospital Wing, gradually working their way through a small pile of letters. Baekhyun is reading one out to Chanyeol, putting his drama skills to excellent use; and Jongdae is folding the discarded envelopes into little paper planes, enchanting them to fly around in circles through the air, entertaining the young girl in the bed beside them. 

They look up when they hear someone approaching, expecting to see Miss Luna or another student with a gift. They greet Jongin warmly, as he sidles up to meet them. Sehun follows close behind, peering over his friend's shoulder. They ask how Chanyeol is doing and then chat about the weather for a bit, and then Jongin asks very politely if they could help them with their potions essays.

"Kyungsoo usually helps us, but he's busy today," he says with a sweet smile. "It's okay if you've got other things to do."

Jongdae and Baekhyun have lots of things to do, if they're being honest with themselves. They still haven't caught up with their classes and Jongdae had promised Luhan he would help find someone to fill the empty position in the team (preferably before Luhan goes bald from stress) but it is true that they have been neglecting their friends somewhat since the duel. There's still another half an hour left before free period ends and lunch starts. Besides, it's not like they are doing anything important anyway. No offence to Chanyeol.

So they agree, perhaps a little too eagerly, and soon all four boys are huddled up in one of the school's many study rooms, scratching their heads as they try to figure out the answer to one of the potions professor's ridiculous essays. 

It really is a doozy of a question, something about moonstones and love potions and other stuff the sixth year boys should probably know but apparently don't, and it becomes obvious very quickly that Baekhyun and Jongdae weren't exactly the best people to ask for help. 

Since when did potions get so difficult? Sure, they've only recently started going to all the lessons on their timetable again, having skipped or unintentionally missed more than they are proud to admit, but this is fifth year stuff! They should know this already- hell, they were examined on it not five months ago! This should be easy, and yet they are slowly driving themselves insane, struggling to provide even the most simple of guidance to the poor fifth years in front of them. 

Has their education really suffered this badly? They try not to think about it too much as they flick through their potions textbooks, pointing out information they think might make this experience a little easier, working into their lunch break.

As for Jongin and Sehun, they seem to be acknowledging their mistake in asking them for help. Jongin looks like he's about to burst a vessel, his hair mussed from running his hands through it too many times, locks sticking out in all directions like some kind of stressed porcupine. Sehun is faring slightly better (mostly because Jongdae has been doing the majority of the work for him) but his frustration is obvious in the amount of noise he is making, little whines and loud huffs of vexation, which, combined with the consistent tapping of his quill on the table, has been grating on the nerves of everyone in the vicinity for quite some time now.

It's only a matter of time before someone snaps.

"For the love of Merlin, could you please stop?" Baekhyun growls, making Jongin jump beside him. Sehun's grumbling is starting to earn them plenty of scornful looks from the students around them. They aren't even in the silent study room, but his constant fidgeting is too obvious to ignore. "You're going to get us kicked out."

Sehun merely whines again. "Potions is haaarrrddd." He drops his head into his hands and groans lowly in his throat, like a child being forced to eat something they don't like. In doing so he accidentally knocks Jongdae in the elbow, causing him to smudge the essay plan he had been carefully constructing for Sehun to follow for the past ten minutes, much to the older student's annoyance. He wipes his now-black stained hand on his robes, trying his hardest not to glare at the boy beside him, who is still grumbling into his hands.

"Yes, it is." Jongdae sighs defeatedly as he scrunches up the parchment, plan now useless and unreadable. "But you don't need to announce it to the room every five seconds."

"It is getting quite annoying," adds Jongin, jaw clenched and hands gripping a little too tightly around his quill.

The harshness in his voice doesn't go unnoticed. "Well what crawled up your arse and died?" Sehun says, bringing his head up from his hands to fix his friend with a look. His tone is unusually confrontational, and Baekhyun and Jongdae spare a confused glance at each other across the table.

What's going on here then?

Jongin exhales sharply through his nose. "You're not the only one writing this stupid essay," he mumbles. He doesn't stop writing, but his pace is far too fast, words coming out in messy, misaligned scrawls. "Least you could do is stop being a whiny baby about it like you're the only person having a tough time."

Sehun fixes Jongin with a scowl, and now Baekhyun and Jongdae really are confused. The air around them is starting to get more and more uncomfortable, and not because of the horrible amount of homework. 

"You're already on your second paragraph," grumbles Sehun. "I've barely even started. Why are you complaining when I'm clearly struggling more than you are?"

"The only reason I've written anything is because Baekhyun is helping me. You've done shit all since we got here." Jongin points at the crumpled ball of parchment in the middle of the table. "Jongdae's spent the last ten minutes writing an essay plan for you and you literally just ruined it because you were being a bellend. Maybe you should actually do some work for once instead of getting other people to do it for you, lazy ass." 

Oh dear. This isn't what the boys expected to happen when they ventured away from the Hospital Wing. Baekhyun looks to Jongdae for a solution but the latter doesn't know what to do besides shrug his shoulders. Jongin and Sehun _never_ fight. What the hell happened to make them so tense with each other?

"What the hell, Jongin? I swear to Merlin, you've been acting like such a prick since the match. You just hate it that someone else did better than you for once. Just because you don't like losing doesn't mean you need to get on my dick about it all the time." Sehun leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, his expression uncharacteristically bitter.

Jongin isn't having any of it. He slams his quill down and leans forward, lips curled into a heavy frown. "Oh, that's rich, Sehun. You only got the snitch before me cause I helped you do your goddamn job. Your captain may have improved your posture but who taught you all those moves? Who taught you that dive you used to beat me? You literally only won because you stole my hard work and claimed it as your own, just like you've been doing here with Jongdae, and just like you've done since the day we started school."

Well shit. The boys know that Jongin hasn't been smiling as much as he used to since the results of the match, but they didn't know it had affected him this much. Jongdae opens his mouth to calm the younger students down but he barely moves before he's cut off by the loud scrape of Sehun pushing himself out of his chair.

"Fine," Sehun snaps. He grabs his bag and drops it onto the table with a loud thud, startling those around him. His hands shake as he scoops up his belongings and shoves them into his bag. Throwing the bag over his shoulder, he turns to Jongdae to mumble a quick and gloomy, "thank you for your help," before wheeling around and marching away from the table. He storms out of the study room, shoulders hunched, hands clenched tightly into fists.

Not seconds after he has left does the expression on Jongin's face melt away, replaced with an overwhelming amount of regret. "Shit, Sehun!" he gasps, scrambling up from his chair and bounding after his friend like a panicked puppy. "Sehun, come back, I didn't mean it!"

"Let's follow them," Baekhyun says, and Jongdae nods his head before they gather their things and hurry out after the younger Gryffindor, whispering an apology to the supervising professor, who glares at them disapprovingly as they pass. Once in the corridor, they take a second to look around for their friends, spotting the tail-end of Jongin's robes disappearing around the far end of the corridor.

"Sehun, I'm sorry!"

Baekhyun and Jongdae run after him, and they turn the corner just in time to see Jongin wrap a hand around Sehun's bag strap, tugging it to get his attention. With a yelp from Sehun, followed by a terribly loud rip, Sehun's bag tears open at the seams, splitting into two pieces of fabric in Jongin's hand. Books and rolls of parchment, empty ink pots and open packets of sweets, go tumbling to the ground, scattering across the stone floor and around Jongin and Sehun's feet like rubber balls down a long flight of stairs.

Jongin immediately lets go of Sehun's bag strap, but by that point it's too late. "Shit!" he gasps, bringing his hands up to his mouth in horror. "Shit, I'm so sorry!"

Sehun turns to face him, but his foot catches on a stray piece of parchment and he is sent hurtling to the floor, landing on his bottom with a crash. Shocked, Jongin goes to help him up but he too slips over - this time on a puddle of ink - and ends up flat on his back. To anyone watching the whole situation must look incredibly comical, but after witnessing the fight before, Baekhyun and Jongdae know it is anything but.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I didn't know it would do that, I'm really sorry, Sehun."

"It's fine," Sehun says, but it really isn't. The poor boy looks like he's about to cry, bottom lip quivering. Jongin immediately stands up and starts picking up as many items from Sehun's bag as he can, gathering them into his arms. Jongdae and Baekhyun rush over to help, the latter sprinting past them to catch an ink pot that is still making its way down the corridor.

With everyone focussing on collecting the contents of Sehun's bag, there's a moment of quiet before someone speaks again. "I didn't mean what I said back there," says Jongin gently. Jongdae turns his back to them, focussing on a messy pile of chocolate frog cards nearby. They probably need some space. "You won the match fair and square. I'm just stressed about quidditch and all the homework. I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I'm really sorry."

"It's okay," Sehun sniffles. "You're right, I was being a brat for no reason. You have every right to be upset."

Jongin shakes his head, but he doesn't push it any further. "We're still friends, right?"

"Yeah." Sehun's smile is small, but his eyes crinkle in the corners. "Of course."

Well that was quick, Jongdae thinks to himself. Not that he's surprised. The young seekers are almost as inseparable as Jongdae and Baekhyun themselves. They were never going to be at odds with each other for long.

Hiding his smirk, Jongdae stands up and walks over to Sehun's tattered bag, abandoned in the middle of the mess. He puts the chocolate frog cards to one side briefly to pull out his wand, casting a quick reparo to patch up the rips in the fabric before sliding the cards into one of the little pockets on the inside of the bag. Satisfied, he walks over to where a textbook sits a little way away from the rest of Sehun's belongings, soaking in a puddle of spilled ink.

Picking it up at the spine, Jongdae gives the book a shake to remove any stray droplets from the sopping paper. Something small, square and white comes flying out from between the pages and drifts down onto the floor, narrowly missing the puddle at Jongdae's feet. Jongdae stops shaking and looks at what seems to be a postcard before bending down and picking it up, doing his best not to get ink on his robes. 

It's not a postcard, but a photo. An old photo. Jongdae looks at curiously, taking in the image of two young boys stood in front of a half-completed treehouse, both covered from head to toe in dirt. It's sweet, but somewhat out of place. Neither of the boys look anything like Sehun, so why does he have a photo like this on him anyway? Stranger yet, something is telling Jongdae that he's seen this picture before, but he can't for the life of him think where. 

Turning around, Jongdae walks over to where the other boys are still squatting on the floor, talking to each other in low voices. "Hey, what's this?" he asks, holding out the photo where Sehun can see it clearly. 

"Hm?" Sehun blinks in confusion before spying the little slip of paper in his hand. "Oh, I forgot I had that."

"What is it?"

"A photo of Kyungsoo." Sehun stands up and brushes down his robes before taking the photo from Jongdae's hands. "We were studying in his room and I found it in one of his drawers."

Standing up beside him, Jongin fixes his friend with an amused yet suspicious look. "So you stole it?"

Sehun instantly splutters, hands flapping at his sides. "I was going to put it back!" he insists, and the look on his face makes the other boys laugh. "But I panicked and put it in my bag instead. I just haven't had time to return it yet, I promise."

"Sure," Jongin chuckles, sounding only a little bit sceptical. He peers over Sehun's shoulder, lifting a hand to point at the smallest of the boys, the one with a plaster on his knee. "Is that really Kyungsoo?" he asks, beaming down at the child curiously.

"Yep," grins Sehun. Jongin coos in response. "He's so cute, isn't he?"

He is cute, Jongdae thinks. Well, he was cute. The current Kyungsoo doesn't really fit that description anymore, at least in Jongdae's opinion. "Who's the other kid?" Jongin asks, drawing Jongdae's attention to the boy holding Kyungsoo's hand. He's short and round and has silly ears that flop under his hat. Why does he feel like he knows this kid?

Sehun shrugs his shoulders. "Don't know. Probably an old friend of his."

"That's Chanyeol."

At the sound of the voice behind them, Sehun and Jongin jump, startling so much that the former almost lets the photo slip from his fingers. Jongdae peers around them to see Baekhyun staring at the photo over Sehun's shoulder, his hand outstretched as he points at the small printed figure of the young boys. His eyes are round and wide, brow creased in a mixture of shock and bewilderment.

The other boy is Chanyeol?

"Is it?" Sehun asks, turning away from Baekhyun to look at the photo again. "But he looks nothing like him?"

Baekhyun shakes his head. "No, that's definitely Chanyeol." He walks over to stand beside Jongdae and gently takes the photo from Sehun, squinting at it suspiciously. "He has the exact same photo above his bed." 

So that's where Jongdae has seen it before. "You're right, he does!" he gasps, ignoring the way Baekhyun rolls his eyes at him. How did he not realise? Chanyeol's bed is right next to his own! But why would Kyungsoo have the same photo? 

His thoughts shift to his Slytherin classmate. "I didn't know he and Kyungsoo knew each other before Hogwarts," he mumbles. From the photo alone, they must have lived in the same village. Do they still, after all these years? Jongdae has stayed over at Chanyeol's house many times, once for the whole of the Christmas holidays, and he has never seen the Slytherin wandering the little country lanes and markets. Maybe they always missed him, or perhaps Kyungsoo moved away entirely. It would explain why Chanyeol never spoken of any wizarding families that lived nearby, besides his own grandparents.

"Are they friends?" asks Jongin.

Jongdae is a little hesitant as he racks his brain for any occasion where Chanyeol may have mentioned knowing Kyungsoo outside of school. "No?" he says as he comes up short, and he frowns at the little white photograph, confused. Chanyeol has never spoken of Kyungsoo before, at least not in relation to their potions classes, and even then they barely talk to each other. Baekhyun says so to the others, confirming Jongdae's thoughts. The idea of them being friends is frankly baffling, and neither Jongdae nor Baekhyun can quite believe their eyes as they take in the sight of little Chanyeol and Kyungsoo hand in hand, smiling as brilliantly as the flowers that surround them.

"That can't be right." Sehun says suddenly. He's squinting at them suspiciously, like he isn't convinced they knew nothing about Chanyeol and Kyungsoo's apparent relationship. "Are you sure they aren't friends?" He looks at Jongin over his shoulder. "Didn't Kyungsoo tutor Chanyeol one year?"

Scratching his head, Jongin nods slowly. "Oh yeah. Last year, wasn't it?"

Hold on, what? Did Jongdae hear that right? "What are you on about?" he says, dismissive. "Chanyeol was tutored by the Professor." He said so himself, not soon after the incident in potions class that resulted in his week-long giraffe neck. Sure, Baekhyun and Jongdae never actually went with him to his sessions, but who else would tutor such a disaster of a student if not for the Potions Master himself? It makes no sense for him to be tutored by a student, even one as talented in potions as Kyungsoo.

Right?

"No, it was definitely Kyungsoo," counters Sehun certainly, receiving an affirming nod from Jongin. "We helped him set up equipment a couple of times and Chanyeol was always there, wasn't he?"

"Yep. We never hung about too long though. They always looked like they didn't want to be disturbed." Jongin turns to Baekhyun and Jongdae, blinking innocently, and Jongdae feels incredibly stupid. "Did you guys not know?"

"No!" they both yell in unison. Jongdae feels like tearing his hair out and Baekhyun is frowning off into the distance, face wrinkled, like he is still struggling to figure out the answer to that horrible potions essay. Kyungsoo tutored Chanyeol, for a whole year, and kept it a secret from his best friends the entire time?! Why on earth would he do that?

"This is ridiculous," he grumbles. "I don't understand. They barely talk to each other..." Chanyeol tells them everything. What does he have to hide?

"They look so close here though," mumbles Jongin. He looks a little sad. "I wonder what happened."

"Jongdae."

A hand claps down on his shoulder. Turning around, Jongdae sees that Baekhyun's face is lit up like a Christmas tree, cheeks rosy and eyes glistening and wide. He looks like he's just figured out the answers to all the questions in the universe, and before Jongdae can ask him why he's shining like the sun in winter for apparently no reason he is cut off with a yelp as the other boy yanks him by the arm and drags him down the corridor, leaving a very stunned and confused Jongin and Sehun behind, still ankle deep in the contents of Sehun's bag.

"Hey, what're you doing?" he snaps as he attempts to wriggle out of his friend's grip. It proves futile, and he stumbles over the stone floor as Baekhyun continues to haul him around like a sack of potatoes. "Where are we going?"

Baekhyun doesn't answer. He looks a little deranged, a little manic with his fist curled in Jongdae's robes, so Jongdae just goes with it, ceasing his struggling in favour of being dragged limply. When they get to the end of the corridor, Baekhyun swings him around the corridor and pushes him in the wall, crowding up against Jongdae so much that the latter can feel the individual buttons of Baekhyun's school shirt through his jumper.

"Baek, what the hell are you-"

"It's Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo is his true love."

Shoving the taller away, Jongdae brushes himself down, rearranging his crumpled robes on his shoulders. "Kyungsoo?" he grumbles, fixing his friend with a doubtful stare through furrowed eyebrows. "What, because they played together as kids?”

Baekhyun hits him on the arm. "I'm serious," he presses, eyes burning with an intensity Jongdae hasn't seen since the duel. "It all adds up, it's been right in front of us this entire time!"

"Has it?"

Unimpressed, Baekhyun rolls his eyes. "Look," he says firmly, gripping Jongdae by the upper arms. "Chanyeol has that photo above his bed, the exact same one! And he once told me that one of his first kisses was with a boy in his village." He shakes his arms, rocking Jongdae's head into the wall. "That must have been Kyungsoo, there's no one else it could have been."

Jongdae shoves him off. "We can't assume that," he says through the stinging of his skull. Kyungsoo can't be the only young boy that lives in Chanyeol's village. Who's to say it wasn't someone else? Jongdae knows how desperate Baekhyun is for answers - he is too - but that seems like a bit of a stretch, even for Baekhyun.

If the other boy had heard what Jongdae had said, he doesn't acknowledge it. "And you know how I bumped into Kyungsoo once when I went to visit Chanyeol?" he raves. "And he said that Jongin bought Chanyeol flowers? Well Jongin had no idea what I was on about when I thanked him for getting them! The flowers must have been from Kyungsoo himself, and he only said they were from Jongin so I wouldn't know they were from him."

"I guess, but-"

"What if," Baekhyun says conspiratorially, wheeling around as he starts to pace around in circles, "what if they stopped being friends when they started school? And then suddenly Kyungsoo becomes Chanyeol's tutor and all those old feelings from before come surging back and they fall in love! But something is stopping them from being together, something really secret, which is why we-," he gestures between Jongdae and himself, "-don't know about it."

"But Chanyeol tells us everything. Why would this be any different?"

Baekhyun shrugs. "I don't know. You have to admit that it sounds pretty plausible though. The photos, the flowers." His pacing slows, and he comes to a stop in the middle of the corridor. A strange sort of melancholy fades onto his face, bleeding into the folds of his wrinkled forehead and the downward corners of his mouth. "When I saw him in the hospital wing… Kyungsoo looked so sad. Like Chanyeol being sick was tearing him apart." 

He looks up, eyes brimming with something Jongdae can't place. "Would he look like that if they were only classmates? Would Chanyeol really keep a photo of someone he never talks to, for all these years, if they meant nothing to him?"

Sighing, Jongdae runs a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. It makes sense, of course it does. Baekhyun is right, Jongdae knows that he's right. He's always right. But he can't help but feel uneasy, like he's walking on a tightrope in the middle of a storm. This would be their fourth attempt at waking Chanyeol, at bringing him home. After everything that has happened, could he stand the possibility of being let down for the fourth time in a row?

"Are you sure about this?" he asks, perhaps at little desperately. "Are you really sure? Because I don't know if I can take being disappointed again."

Baekhyun walks towards Jongdae and takes his hand, squeezing it gently. "I'm certain," he says. He looks so hopeful. "Please, Dae. Let's try. We have to at least try."

Baekhyun's hand is warm. Jongdae takes a moment to think. "Okay," he says finally. They have to at least try. "If you're certain, then I'm certain." He ignores the voice in his head that speaks of nothing but futility and focuses on the way Baekhyun's face blooms into a brilliant smile, relief evident in the gentle slope of his shoulders.

"Thank you," Baekhyun says, and Jongdae squeezes his hand in reply. With new-found determination, Baekhyun lets go of his hand and heads around the corner, Jongdae following suit. Jongin and Sehun are exactly where they left them, the space around their feet now empty of ink puddles and stray pieces of parchment, and Baekhyun and Jongdae sprint towards them hurriedly, catching them by surprise. They need to talk to Kyungsoo as soon as possible, and who better to ask than two of the select few people Kyungsoo is ever actually seen with.

"Jongin, Sehun? Do you know where Kyungsoo is right now?"

Sehun blinks at them. "The potions classroom, why? He's doing something for the professor though, I wouldn't-"

They are gone before Sehun can even finish his sentence.

 

~

 

Baekhyun has never really liked the potions classroom very much. It's always so dark and damp (a given really, seeing as it's entirely underground) and the walls seem to ooze with strange and bitter smells that stick to your clothes for hours afterwards. The desks are always sticky and the chairs are too hard. Too many of his detentions have been served here, scraping the charred remains of faulty potions from the inside of cauldrons, or scrubbing soot from the wooden desks until his fingers ache. There is very little about this room that he likes, except, of course, when classes end and he gets to leave for the rest of the day.

His miserable experiences have caused potions to be his least favourite subject, and he would have dropped the subject immediately after completing his O.W.L's if not for the fact that it's a required N.E.W.T when pursuing a career as a healer. To make matters worse, neither Chanyeol nor Jongdae took up the subject for their last two years at school, so Baekhyun has to suffer through the painfully long lessons alone. He was hoping he wouldn't find himself between the dripping walls at least until his next lesson the day after tomorrow. But needs must, and he does his best to ignore the scents of pickled beetle wings and bezoars as he and Jongdae stumble through the dungeons towards the potions classroom, cautious of the watchful eyes of the Slytherin prefects that loiter near the entrance to their common room.

Baekhyun and Jongdae gently push open the door and tiptoe in quietly. They expect to see their classmate hunkered over a bubbling cauldron, stirring rhythmically or slicing up something rancid and unpleasant to tip into his latest concoction. To their surprise, they find that the room is empty. Kyungsoo is nowhere to be found.

For a moment Baekhyun wonders if Jongin and Sehun had been mistaken about Kyungsoo's whereabouts. Both had insisted that Kyungsoo was doing some extra credit work for the professor and would thus be in the potions room, alone. They take a second to scan the room, and the sight of Kyungsoo's familiar brown satchel and wire framed glasses, still slightly steamed up around the edges, sat on the table in the frontmost corner of the room, tell them that the younger students were indeed correct. An empty cauldron, left upside down on the drying rack next to the sink, and a tub full of water with utensils soaking inside, act as further proof that Kyungsoo is nearby. 

Whatever it was their classmate was cooking now sits in rows of little glass phials on the professor's desk. The liquid is a deep purple colour and glowing slightly, and the room smells surprisingly sweet, like honey and sugar cookies. It would be pleasant if not for the fact it is horrendously overpowering, filling up their nostrils and windpipes like syrup, and the boys sniff away the urge to sneeze as they shuffle over to where Kyungsoo's belongings sit without their owner.

“Kyungsoo?" Jongdae calls out.

From behind them comes a noise, followed by the tapping of footsteps. They turn around to see Kyungsoo's round head appear from inside the professor's private store cupboard. His short hair is a little frazzled and his cheeks are slightly pink, typical symptoms of spending too much time hunkered over gallons of steaming liquid, and his round eyes squint at them from the other side of the room. 

"Who is it?"

It takes a moment for them to remember that Kyungsoo isn't wearing his glasses. "It's Jongdae," Jongdae says. "Baekhyun's here too."

They could be mistaken, but at the sound of their names Kyungsoo seems to frown. "Hi," he says, stepping out into the classroom. "What are you guys doing here?" He looks at Baekhyun. "We don't have potions today."

"We were wondering if we could talk to you?"

A momentary, yet somewhat uncomfortable pause. "Okay." Kyungsoo walks over to the far table and picks up his glasses, putting them on for a second before taking them off again and polishing them with his robes. "What can I help you with?"

Right. Here goes. Baekhyun and Jongdae share a look, unexpectedly nervous. Jongdae gives Baekhyun a supportive nudge to the ribs with his elbow, and Baekhyun swats his friend's hand away before reluctantly stepping forwards to address the boy in front of them.

"You've probably heard what happened to Chanyeol. About the sleeping potion and stuff?"

Kyungsoo nods his head. He looks a little awkward, stiff and uncomfortable, like he has a stomach ache. "Yes. Are you asking if I know the antidote?" He stops polishing and puts his glasses on, blinking as his eyes adjust to the gloomy light of the classroom. "I've never heard of a potion like that before, so I don't know how to cure its effects. I could do some research but I don't know if I'll be able to find anything substantial to help you.

Baekhyun can't help but notice how shifty Kyungsoo looks right now. The Slytherin isn't known to display his emotions as openly as most other people would, but even an idiot could tell that there's something off about him. He looks uncomfortable, his eyes continuously flicking from Baekhyun to Jongdae to the door and back again, like he wants them to leave but is too polite to say so. It makes him think of the time he bumped into him in the Hospital Wing and how awkward Kyungsoo seemed then as well. 

A thought occurs to him. Did they do something to upset him? Baekhyun can't think of what it might be. He hopes that Kyungsoo's discomfort is down to unwanted social interactions and not because Baekhyun and Jongdae had accidentally antagonised him in the past without knowing. An unhappy Kyungsoo is less likely to agree to help them, and Baekhyun doesn't know what he'll do if they can't convince him otherwise.

"We already know the cure," Jongdae says. "Which is why we need your help."

Kyungsoo's eyes narrow, whether in suspicion or curiosity, Baekhyun isn't sure. "Okay," he says. "What is it then?"

Fuck. Baekhyun's throat feels impossibly dry. Chanyeol's life rests on the success of this conversation and if they mess up, if they've got it all wrong or can't convince Kyungsoo to help them, then… well, he doesn't really want to think about it. The photo of Chanyeol and Kyungsoo as children sits in the breast pocket of his robes, and it feels like it's burning his skin through his uniform. Baekhyun's hand finds its way to the edge of Jongdae's robes, and he squeezes the fabric between his fingers for reassurance before letting go.

"True love's kiss."

Kyungsoo doesn't react immediately. Unlike Jongin, whose eyes widened and mouth went limp before he was cut off by his reckless friends - or even Baekhyun and Jongdae themselves, who went through about twelve different emotions in the space of a minute, shrouded in the darkness of the Restricted Section - Kyungsoo's face barely changes, expression still as guarded as the moment he saw who was calling him name. The only sign that he even heard what Baekhyun said is the subtle widening of his eyes and the rise of his shoulders, like the bristling of a hedgehog. He stares at the boys for an uncomfortable amount of time, almost like he is searching for cracks in their expressions, hints that a joke is being played at his expense. 

Baekhyun wishes it was a joke, and he hopes his face is sincere enough to convince Kyungsoo that they are in fact telling the truth.

After a while, Kyungsoo sighs. "I see," he says. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he suddenly turns around and walks over to the professor's desk. He picks up a box that Baekhyun didn't notice before and starts placing the vials of purple potion inside, organising them roughly. At first Baekhyun is confused, but then he sees that Kyungsoo's hands are starting to quiver slightly, rattling the phials in the box. He’s nervous, and he's avoiding them.

"Kyungsoo, we-"

"I don't know how you came to the conclusion you did, but you've made a mistake." Kyungsoo snaps, cutting him off. His back is turned to them and Baekhyun can't see his face but voice is tight, like a rope is steadily knotting its way around his throat. "I can't help you. Chanyeol and I barely know each other. To say that someone who I rarely talk to is my true love is ridiculous."

To the right of Baekhyun, Jongdae frowns incredulously. "Rarely talk to? You tutored him for half of fifth year."

"Telling someone how to mash flies properly barely constitutes a relationship, Jongdae."

His defensiveness does not go unnoticed. "True, but being friends does." Jongdae crosses his arms, tilting his head as he looks at Kyungsoo with searching eyes. "You live in the same village, you played together as kids." He pauses for a moment, as if unsure of what his next words should be. "He was your first kiss."

Kyungsoo suddenly stills. The phial in his hand slips between his fingers and shatters as it hits the floor, sending shards of glass and fat droplets of shimmering purple all over his feet. Baekhyun, who is stood the closest of the two Gryffindors, yelps and leaps back to avoid the glass but Kyungsoo doesn't move, ignoring everything in favour of staring at the ground with dark eyes. 

"How do you know that?"

The rawness in Kyungsoo's voice tells them all they needs to know. Baekhyun is confident that his theory about Kyungsoo is getting more and more accurate by the second. Jongdae is wilting slightly under the strength of Kyungsoo's stare but there is determination etched into the corners of his mouth and eyes. They have something to work with, and they won't leave this room without Kyungsoo at their side.

"He told me," Baekhyun says. Kyungsoo slowly wheels around, fixing Baekhyun with a strange look. His face is as blank as usual but his eyes are shimmering with something that Baekhyun can't quite place. Disbelief? Anger? Betrayal? All three, perhaps. "He never said it was you specifically, but has a photo of you two together pinned above his bed. I figured the rest out for myself. Although I didn't realise the boy in it was you until today."

He pulls out the photo from inside his robes. "I believe this belongs to you. Sehun said he found it in your room."

Like a magnet, Kyungsoo's eyes are drawn to the photo immediately. He blinks at it several times before stepping forwards hesitantly and taking it from Baekhyun's hand. He half expects the Slytherin to throw it back in his face, but he doesn't, instead choosing to hold it between his fingers delicately. The sight stirs something in Baekhyun's gut.

With a sigh, Kyungsoo lowers his hands. "That was a long time ago." He walks over to his bag and puts the photo inside, buckling it up closed. "Things are different now."

"How come?" asks Jongdae. "Why are they different?"

"They just are. You wouldn't understand."

"Then help us understand. You can't keep things bottled up forever, Kyungsoo."

With his bag fully closed, Kyungsoo stands motionless beside the table. He looks tired, dark circles heavy. After a few seconds of silence, he moves to lean against the table with his hands, taking a shallow breath. 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly have that many friends. I’m not that great at talking to people, and even if I was, no one wants to hang out with the supposed grandson of a Death Eater anyway." Baekhyun and Jongdae share an uncomfortable look, and if Kyungsoo notices their reaction, he doesn’t mention it. "Growing up, the only kid who wasn’t afraid to go anywhere near me was Chanyeol. We did everything together. For a very long time he was my only friend."

He lets go of the table and turns around, facing the other two boys but keeping his eyes on his shoes. "When we started Hogwarts, I hoped that friendship would carry through." He coughs a bitter laugh. "Apparently not.”

“What happened?” Jongdae asks softly.

“I don't know. When we started school our differences became more obvious. We didn’t see eye to eye anymore. Eventually, we just drifted apart."

He looks up at Baekhyun and Jongdae for the first time in minutes, exhausted eyes dark. "He found better people to be with." 

Guilt, thick and sickly like cough syrup. Baekhyun was right, they had done something to make Kyungsoo dislike them; they had taken his only friend from him. No wonder he seems so reluctant to talk to them, or even be in the same room as them. They had stolen the only person Kyungsoo found comfort in, albeit unintentionally, and Kyungsoo has had to face the fact that his only friend abandoned him for other people every single day for six years.

But why is that their fault? Why are Jongdae and Baekhyun to blame? If anything, it is Chanyeol's fault for Kyungsoo's loneliness. Chanyeol had never, ever mentioned a relationship with the young Slytherin, and had they known that Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were friends the boys would have immediately pulled him into their group, accepted him with open arms. Why did Chanyeol deny him that? Why would he abandon someone he clearly cares so much about?

Baekhyun can't help but wonder what would school have been like if Kyungsoo had remained a part of Chanyeol's life. Would the trio be as mischievous as they are, or would Kyungsoo reel them in, keep them grounded and out of trouble with blank stares and arched brows. Or maybe he would he join in, be playful and cunning, keep the others on their toes as they made their way through the school years in a flurry of food fights and fireworks. 

Maybe, after years of searching looks and innocent touches, he and Chanyeol would have found happiness in each other.

If that idiot ever wakes up, Baekhyun is going to have some words.

Pushing himself up, Kyungsoo walks over to the professor's desk again. "But that was then and this is now," he says, and the finality in his tone glaringly obvious. "I haven't spoken to Chanyeol in months, not since before our exams. What you want me to do is futile. The sooner you realise that the better."

Pulling out his wand, Kyungsoo vanishes the spilt potion on the floor and levitates the pieces of glass into the bin behind the professor's desk. He puts the rest of the purple potion phials with the other in the box and goes to close it, folding the lid down gently to avoid any more damage to the contents inside. With his bag buckled up and his task for the professor completed, Baekhyun knows that Kyungsoo is going to try to leave. Panicking, Baekhyun rushes forwards.

"You love him, don't you?" It makes so much sense to him now. "You're in love with Chanyeol."

Kyungsoo stops moving. "We're sixteen, Baekhyun," he snaps, annoyed.

"So?" Jongdae says. Baekhyun hadn't noticed that Jongdae had moved to stand closer, blocking the nearest path to the door. "You don't have to be an adult to be in love."

"This 'true love' crap is nonsense." Kyungsoo glares at them over his shoulder. "Your plan is not going to work."

"No," Jongdae scowls, "you just don't want it to-."

Before Jongdae can even finish his sentence, Kyungsoo cuts him off by slamming the box of potions down onto the desk. The noise of the phials against the wood sends a blast into the air, which echoes off the slimy, damp walls. 

"And what if I don't?" Kyungsoo wheels around, fists clenched. "What if I don't want to be confronted with the fact that the person who forced me out of his life for no apparent reason has apparently been secretly in love with me the entire time and what, just ignored me for the fun of it? Abandoned me at every opportunity just because he could?" He shakes his head. "That's not love, okay? You know it isn't."

"Kyungsoo," Baekhyun starts, but he doesn't know what else to say. Kyungsoo is tearing himself apart right in front of them and Baekhyun hates that they have to do this to him, have to open all these wounds and let them bleed all over the floor. "Please."

"What do you want from me?"

"One kiss," Jongdae pleads. "Just one kiss, that's all."

"I can't do that."

"Yes you can." Baekhyun is desperate, so, so desperate, and he doesn't realise he's moving until he's already crowding into Kyungsoo's space, grabbing him by the arm. Kyungsoo startles and stumbles backwards to get away, but Baekhyun is stronger than he looks and he holds on tight, tugging the other around to face him. Jongdae calls out his name but Baekhyun doesn't hear him. He needs Kyungsoo to help them, and he'll do whatever it takes.

"Look, Kyungsoo, Chanyeol is dying," he says, voice cracking pitifully. Kyungsoo stops struggling but he avoids Baekhyun's eyes, staring down past the other boy's shoulder at something Baekhyun can't see. "He is dying. And pretty soon, he won't be here anymore. This is our last chance to help him, okay? Our last chance to bring our friend back. All it'll take is just one kiss."

He lets go of Kyungsoo's arm. Kyungsoo shrugs him off but doesn't push him away. Even if he still won't look Baekhyun in the eye, it's enough to show that he's listening. Somewhat satisfied, yet still hesitant, Baekhyun takes a small step back.

"You don't even need to stay," he says softly. "You can just do it and leave, and if it works we will lie to him and say we found a cure, or the effects wore off, or hell, the power of friendship saved the day! I don't care. All we are asking is that you do this for him. And if you are right and it doesn't work, at least we can say we did everything we could, that we tried every option available to us until the very end. I don't want him to die because we did nothing despite having something. He deserves that at least."

In the distance, the sound of students milling about in the corridors starts to fade. Lunch must almost be over. They don't have much time, and Baekhyun searches Kyungsoo's face for any reaction, anything to say that he will put his anger aside to help bring their friend back. He doesn't know how long he stands there, mere inches away, just staring, urging Kyungsoo to listen, but it feels like hours before he gets an answer.

"If I do this for you," Kyungsoo says, voice low like a whisper, so quiet that Baekhyun almost can't hear him at all, "can you promise that he'll never find out the truth? If he wakes up… can you promise he will never find out it was me?"

Light, white hot and brilliant, courses through Baekhyun's veins. Behind him, Jongdae heaves a sigh of relief. He can almost see the smile that spreads across his friend's cheeks. "Yes," Baekhyun breathes. He's so happy he can barely speak. "We promise. Thank you."

With a sigh, Kyungsoo slips away from him. No one says anything as he gathers his belongings, throwing his bag over his shoulder and rearranging his robes where Baekhyun tugged them loose. When he has everything he needs, Kyungsoo turns, heading towards the door.

Just as he is about to exit the room, he pauses. "I'll meet you at the Hospital Wing at lunch tomorrow," he says over his shoulder. "I want this to be over as soon as possible." He still won't look at them, like he is ashamed, but Baekhyun doesn't care. Kyungsoo has agreed to help them, and that is all that matters.

They say yes, and with one last nod, Kyungsoo leaves. 

Baekhyun lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. The knots in his shoulders unravel, leaving him feeling floppy and unsteady. A hand slips into his own and he looks to his right to see Jongdae smiling at him, lips curled and crow's feet decorating the corners of his eyes. He looks happy, but Baekhyun knows that the light that usually accompanies his smiles isn't there. All he can see is exhaustion, and it makes Baekhyun realise how tired he actually is.

"Lunch time tomorrow," he mumbles. To his ears, his voice sounds like he's underwater. "This will all be over by lunch time tomorrow."

"Hopefully," says Jongdae. He lets go of Baekhyun's hand and moves to wrap his arm around his shoulders, squeezing gently. "Let's go. Class is about to start."

Baekhyun rocks his head into Jongdae's shoulder, and lets the latter lead him from the potions room.

He tries not to think about the wetness on his shoes, or the empty space in the pocket of his robes.

 

~

 

Baekhyun doesn't sleep that night. Jongdae knows this because he, too, doesn't sleep. How could they, when the thought of seeing their best friend for the first time in a month sits so heavy in the air it's almost suffocating? Jongdae lies awake, staring at the chocolate frog cards he has glued to the ceiling above his bed, listening to the sounds of Baekhyun huffing and sighing and wriggling around in his duvet for what seems like hours. It probably is hours. The fact that all the noise doesn't wake their other two dormmates is a wonder in itself.

Eventually, Baekhyun gives up his quest for sleep, growing quiet for the first time that night. Jongdae strains his ears in the dark, and when he hears the sound of blankets rustling and the quiet pad of bare feet on the cold floor, he shuffles over in his bed to make extra room before Baekhyun lifts the covers and slips inside.

It's only then, with the weight of Baekhyun's head on his chest and the feeling of his hair tickling his chin, arms wrapped tightly around his waist as he does the same around his friend's back, that Jongdae manages to close his eyes and drift into some semblance of sleep. He can still hear the snores of his dormmates from the other side of the room, still feel Baekhyun's breath on his arms and neck, but when the sun rises the next morning and his alarm alerts him that he needs to get ready for school, he feels somewhat well rested, perhaps more so than he has been for a very long time.

He climbs out of bed gently, careful not to nudge the boy beside him. Baekhyun is drooling into Jongdae's pillow, snoring softly, and Jongdae leaves him to sleep in favour of having a long hot shower. The memories of the day before trickle through his mind as he scrubs at his skin and rubs shampoo into his hair, and the image of their small Slytherin classmate hand in hand with Chanyeol won't leave his mind. He prays that Kyungsoo is wrong, that the kiss will work, and by lunchtime today they will have their friend back to normal, and everything will be as it was, as it should be.

If Kyungsoo is right? Well. He doesn't want to think about that anymore.

The rest of the day follows as normal. Baekhyun wakes himself up by rolling out of bed and landing on his face, and they spend the morning chatting with their dormmates as they get dressed and make their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast. After finishing off whatever food they can stomach (Jongdae has a bowl of fruit salad whilst Baekhyun shoves as many bread rolls into his face as possible) they dash off to their classes, separating in the Entrance Hall with a hug as Baekhyun runs down to the dungeons for Potions and Jongdae sprints up the Grand Staircase for Arithmancy. 

Defence Against the Dark Arts follows next, and then Jongdae leaves Baekhyun behind in the corridor as he makes his way to Muggle Studies. Despite being Muggleborn himself, Jongdae took the class wholeheartedly when it came to selecting his N.E.W.T subjects at the start of the year. An extra N.E.W.T wouldn't hurt, and he always found it fascinating how peculiarly the magical world views muggles and their non-magic way of life. Today, however, his interest is non-existent, and he spends the entire lesson staring out of the window, dreading the moment the Professor lets them leave for lunch.

The sound of chairs scraping against the floor jolts him out of his head. The class is over, and Jongdae gathers his books and parchment into his bag and slugs it over his shoulder, waving goodbye to the Professor as he shuffles out of the room and into the bustling corridor. 

The Hospital Wing and Muggle Studies classroom are on the same floor - the first floor - but with all the students milling about it takes him a lot longer than usual to get to where he needs to go. Baekhyun is already there waiting for him. Jongdae calls out his name, and the former stops gnawing nervously on his nails to wave at Jongdae over, flashing him a relieved smile. "How was class?" he asks, and Jongdae doesn't miss the tightness in his voice.

"Boring," Jongdae replies. "Is Kyungsoo here yet?"

Baekhyun shakes his head. "I saw him in Potions, but he left as soon as the class ended." He brings his hand up to chew on his nails again. "I haven't seen him since."

Taking his hand, Jongdae gently coaxes it away from his mouth. "He'll be here soon," he reassures. Kyungsoo doesn't seem the type to back out of a deal without notice. It's not like he could hide from them anyway, if he did stand them up. Jongdae wouldn't exactly chase him around with an axe or anything, but he would make his disappointment very well known. Squeezing his hand, Jongdae leans against the wall, scanning his eyes up and down the corridor as he and Baekhyun wait in silence.

They don't have to wait very long. Not two minutes later, Jongdae spots Kyungsoo's round head bobbing towards them through the crowd. 

Pushing himself off the wall, Jongdae lets go of Baekhyun's hand and waves, drawing Kyungsoo's attention. Kyungsoo's eyes widen behind his glasses and he replies with an awkward wave of his own, and Jongdae returns his hand to Baekhyun's to prevent his friend from biting his own fingers off in anxiety. 

"Hi," Jongdae says when Kyungsoo sidles up to them, ignoring the way Kyungsoo briefly eyes his and Baekhyun's curled hands. "How's your day been?"

"Good," Kyungsoo says bluntly. "Sorry I'm late."

Merlin, could this get any more awkward. "It's fine," he replies. "Are you sure you're still okay to help us?"

Kyungsoo nods. Realising that that's all he's going to get out of him, Jongdae lets go of Baekhyun's hand and walks over to the Hospital Wing door, holding it open for the other two before heading in himself, closing the it gently behind him. 

The Hospital Wing is a little busy today. With the early chills of winter settling in, several students have already come down with the sniffles, coughing and sneezing all over the place as Miss Luna calmly hands out steaming mugs of pepperup potion to all those waiting to be treated. She greets them cheerfully as they walk past, and Jongdae does his best to reply in kind.

The curtain around Chanyeol's bed has been drawn today, leaving him hidden from view. As they approach, Jongdae's stomach starts to wrangle itself into knots. Sweat beads on his temples despite the cold, and he bites his lip nervously, tapping his fingers on his thigh as they make their way past rows and rows of beds, some occupied, some empty.

An elbow connects with his arm, and Jongdae looks up to find Baekhyun looking at him. He smiles, weak but warm, and it calms the anxious feelings in his gut for a little while. It reminds him how lucky he is to have a friend like Baekhyun in his life, and he thanks him wholeheartedly with a jab to the ribs of his own.

Kyungsoo looks at them like they're barmy. Jongdae doesn't have the energy to care.

They come to a stop a metre or so away from Chanyeol's bed. On the floor outside the curtain sits a small pile of presents and letters. Baekhyun nudges them out of the way with his foot before taking the curtain in hand, sharing a nervous look with Jongdae before turning to address their quiet companion.

"You okay?"

Nodding, Kyungsoo clears his throat. "Sure. Let's get this over and done with."

With one last look, Baekhyun opens the curtain.

The gasp that Kyungsoo lets out is so quiet it's almost impossible to hear. Almost. Jongdae forgot that Kyungsoo probably hasn't seen Chanyeol since the day he visited him all those weeks ago. Chanyeol has changed a lot since then, grown frail and skeletal in all the time that has passed, and to anyone who doesn't see him on a regular basis, like Baekhyun and Jongdae and Miss Luna, the sight of him spread out like a corpse must be horrifying. Kyungsoo's blank façade melts away almost instantly, replaced by an expression that Jongdae can only describe as heartbreak. He steps forwards gingerly, hands shaking as he brings them up to hold them near his chest.

"I didn't know it was this bad."

Jongdae stays by the gap in the curtain as Baekhyun moves to stand near the head of the bed. "He's been asleep for over a month," Baekhyun says lowly, sadly. "It's a miracle he's even like this, to be fair. From what we read, it could be a lot worse."

"If I had known, I would have…"

"It's okay," says Jongdae. "You're here now."

Slowly, Kyungsoo makes his way around the bed to sit down on the edge of the mattress in the curve of Chanyeol's waist. He hasn't taken his eyes off Chanyeol since the moment he stepped behind the curtain. Baekhyun and Jongdae watch silently as Kyungsoo trails his eyes across the length of Chanyeol's body, from the tips of his toes to his hips, along his stomach and up to his chest, hands clenching momentarily at the sight of his protruding ribs and collarbones. They only unfurl when he reaches Chanyeol's face. His eyes settle on the curve of Chanyeol's cupid's bow, a shadow on the greyness of his skin.

"The flowers are still here?"

It takes them a second to figure what Kyungsoo is referring to. "What?" Baekhyun says, blinking in confusion until his eyes finally settle on the tulips, still as vibrant as they were the day Kyungsoo brought them. "Oh, yes. Our friend, Yixing, enchanted them so they would never wilt."

"The Hufflepuff?" Kyungsoo asks. He hums softly when Baekhyun says yes. "That's kind of him."

It's clear that Kyungsoo is hesitant. The Hospital Wing grows quiet as the once-sniffling students head back out into the school. Jongdae doesn't want to rush - there is no doubt Kyungsoo is struggling to take it all in, and he wants to give him time to gather his thoughts before they progress any further - but they've wasted so much time already. "Are you ready?" Jongdae asks, perhaps a little too urgently. Baekhyun frowns at him from the other side of Chanyeol's bed. 

Kyungsoo smiles, but it isn't happy. "No," he says. "The last time we spoke to each other I told him I hated him."

Merlin. Jongdae's stomach starts to churn horribly. 

"Remember, you don't have to be here when he wakes up," reminds Baekhyun. 

" _If_ he wakes up." Kyungsoo lets out a heavy sigh, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them slowly. "I know. Thank you."

This is it. This is the moment they have been waiting for. There's no going back. Either this works, or it doesn't. Fear, white hot and suffocating, wraps itself around Jongdae's throat. He takes a few steps back, leaving Kyungsoo with some room to think, to breathe. Quietly, Baekhyun shuffles over to join him, holding Jongdae's hand like it's the only thing in the world that will stop him from floating away.

No one moves for a long time. When Kyungsoo does move, it is to place a hand gently over Chanyeol's own, hesitant and cautious, like he is afraid. He sits there, feeling the chill of Chanyeol's skin soak into his own. They look beautiful together, Jongdae thinks, and it breaks his heart.

Kyungsoo leans down, and the world stops spinning.

 

~

 

_"Kyungsoo! Kyungsoo!"_

_Kyungsoo looks up from his book at the sound of his name. The voice is coming from a little way away, just at the end of the garden. He recognises it instantly, and with a little less care than his mother would like he slams his book shut and places it on the floor beside him. A feeling starts to bubble in his stomach, curling around his lungs and ribs, and he wishes that it were excitement, hot and brilliant like the shining sun and freshly made chocolate pudding, instead of worry. He can feel his palms begin to sweat so he rubs them on his trousers, conscious of how his skin feels against the itchy wool of his sweater. He wore it because it's snowing outside, and it's his favourite colour, but now he just feels ridiculous. He eventually settles with his hands in his lap, listening out for the voice that gets closer and closer with each cry of his name._

_The letter sits heavy in his pocket._

_Soon, the stomp stomp stomp of running footsteps draws to a close just below the entrance of the treehouse. Moments later, a short, plump boy climbs through the door, sweat beading at his brow and an impossibly wide grin on his face that only gets bigger when his eyes meet Kyungsoo's own._

_"Kyungsoo, did you get your letter?" Chanyeol asks, pushing his glasses back up his nose. He's panting heavily, so Kyungsoo assumes he must have ran all the way here from where he lives on the opposite side of the village. Kyungsoo reaches into his pocket and pulls out his letter. It's a little crumpled, and he smooths it out on his lap as Chanyeol settles himself more comfortably on the wooden floor._

_"Yes," he says. "It arrived this morning."_

_"Did you open it?"_

_Kyungsoo shakes his head. "No. I wanted to wait for you."_

_Another grin, somehow more brilliant than the last. Chanyeol is almost vibrating with excitement, crossed knees bouncing off the floor and fingers already pulling at the corners of the parchment envelope. If Kyungsoo wasn't excited before, he certainly is now, Chanyeol's anticipation growing more infectious as the seconds pass. He finds himself sporting a matching smile, and when Chanyeol shuffles a little closer on his bottom, Kyungsoo moves forward too. Their knees bump together and it's a little bit uncomfortable, but Kyungsoo doesn't mind._

_"Let's open them together!"_

_Slowly, Kyungsoo carefully opens his letter, smoothing apart the wax seal and gently slipping the letter out, taking time to fold out the creases of the parchment and straighten out the wrinkles before reading the contents quietly. Meanwhile, Chanyeol wastes no seconds in tearing the envelope in several pieces and throwing them over his shoulder, hurryingly unfolding the parchment and reading the contents allowed in as dramatic voice he can muster. His deep bellows echo around the small wooden walls. Kyungsoo jabs him in the knee for being so loud but he's smiling too, and the tiny treehouse seems to shake as the larger boy collapses into a fit of excited giggles._

_"Dear Mr. Park - and Mr. Do - we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"_

_Kyungsoo can't help but giggle too. He really likes Chanyeol's laugh, how it's so big and loud and full, like a belly after a good, hearty meal. He throws his arms out like an octopus and scrunches his face up really tight, one eye more closed than the other, and he looks so incredibly silly that it never fails to make Kyungsoo feel happy and warm. In Kyungsoo's opinion, his friend's laugh is the best in the whole wide world, and nothing will ever come close._

_(Chanyeol thinks Kyungsoo's laugh is good too. Kyungsoo disagrees.)_

_Chanyeol had gotten his letter months ago, a week or so after his birthday in November. Instead of opening it on the day it arrived, he asked his mum if he could wait until Kyungsoo got his so they could open them together. Kyungsoo had turned eleven a few days ago, and when the large brown envelope showed up amongst the usual post that morning at breakfast, Kyungsoo immediately begged his mother to send the Park's an owl to tell his friend the exciting news._

_Kyungsoo has been thinking about this day for a very long time, waiting and worrying every night for weeks, but nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of having Chanyeol's knobbly knees bash against his own as they chortle their way through a long list of spell books and uniform requirements. It's nothing like he could have ever imagined, and he's so elated that he almost forgets about the snakes and eels in his stomach that have been filling him with dread since he saw the family owl fly off into the distance that morning._

_When the contents of the letter come to an end, Chanyeol finishes his performance with a flourish and takes one of Kyungsoo's hands in his own, squeezing tightly it as he hops up and down on his bottom._

_"This is amazing!" he beams brilliantly. "I can't believe we're actually going to Hogwarts!"_

_"We were always going to go," Kyungsoo smiles softly. "It's not really a surprise."_

_"Still. I'm super happy anyway!" He drops Kyungsoo's hand and uses to brush his long hair out of his face. "We'll finally get to be real wizards! Just think of all the cool spells we'll get to do, and all the quidditch we can play." He sighs wistfully, like he is recounting his school years before they've even happened. "It's going to be amazing, Soo. We're going to have the best time of our lives!"_

_He grins, eyes shining brilliantly like fireworks. "What house do you think you'll be in?"_

_There it is, the thing Kyungsoo has been dreading. The monsters in Kyungsoo's stomach rear their ugly heads, swirling around in his stomach like slimy worms. He does his best to force the nasty feelings down and looks down, twiddling his fingers in his lap as he shrugs his shoulders half-heartedly._

_"I don't know. Everyone in my family are Slytherins. I'll probably be the same."_

_At this, Chanyeol hums. He brings his hand up to rub at his chin, apparently deep in thought. "You're super smart and like reading and stuff," he says cheerfully. "You could be a Ravenclaw."_

_Kyungsoo sincerely doubts that. If he had a pound for every rubbish report card he's gotten since he started primary school he would have enough money to buy Chanyeol that remote control plane he's been longing for in the village toy shop window." I'm really bad at school work though," he mutters glumly. "Everyone says so."_

_"You don't need to be good at school work to be smart!" Chanyeol reassuringly nudges Kyungsoo in the thigh with his foot. "You're really clever in other ways."_

_Shrugging, Kyungsoo sags his shoulders. He looks down at his hands for a moment before he feels Chanyeol poking him in the knee, making him lift his head to see Chanyeol smiling warmly at him. "You're also really nice, and you tell the truth. And you help out a lot at the church, even though you don’t have to. You could be a Hufflepuff."_

_Kyungsoo doubts that too. "I don't know," he says. "I'm probably a Slytherin."_

_Chanyeol smile momentarily turns into a frown, but it's only for a second. Sighing wistfully, he leans back against the wooden wall and rests his hands on his stomach, like a wise old man settling in an armchair. "Mum says that I'm a Gryffindor through and through," he states confidently. "She says she'll eat her slippers if I'm in any other house."_

_The monsters roar, and Kyungsoo slams his eyes shut to drown them out. He hates that he feels this way, all because of something as silly as houses. He's being such an idiot and he knows it._

_A large hand rests on his knee. "What's wrong?" Chanyeol asks softly. He sounds concerned. Kyungsoo really is stupid._

_"Nothing."_

_Chanyeol shakes him gently, urging Kyungsoo to open his eyes and look up at him. Chanyeol's eyes are soft behind his glasses, and he's smiling that one smile, the one Kyungsoo really likes._

_"Tell me?"_

_Kyungsoo knows he can't say no. Embarrassed, he brings his knees up and hugs them to his chest, resting his chin on them as he looks down at the floor and away from Chanyeol's worried expression. "What if you are a Gryffindor and I am a Slytherin?"_

_"What do you mean?" Chanyeol asks. He sounds confused, and Kyungsoo buries his face into his crossed arms._

_"Seungsoo said that Gryffindor and Slytherin don't like each other. What if we can't be friends anymore?"_

_Chanyeol's reaction is instant. He bursts into movement, throwing his hands up into the air (or at least as far as they will go without whacking them against the ceiling), glasses crooked on his nose as his face twists into humorous outrage. It would make Kyungsoo laugh if he wasn't feeling so bad._

_"Kyungsoo, that's ridiculous! Only dumb old people believe in that kind of stuff. Nothing will ever stop us from being friends. Nothing! You're my best friend in the whole wide world!"_

_Warmth blooms in Kyungsoo's chest, scaring some of the monsters away. "You're my best friend too," he says pitifully, face still buried in his legs._

_"Even if we are in different houses, it would never matter." Chanyeol's hand moves from Kyungsoo's knee to his hand, unfolding it from around Kyungsoo's legs so he can hold it tightly in between them. "We'll always be best friends."_

_"You might find someone better than me. You might not want me to be your friend anymore."_

_"Soo." Chanyeol says his name so softly it makes the hairs on Kyungsoo's arm prickle. There's quiet for a moment before Kyungsoo hears Chanyeol shuffle around on the wooden floor. "Here, let me give you something."_

_Looking up, Kyungsoo sees that Chanyeol is now on his knees. His hands are clenched, and Kyungsoo eyes them wearily. "What is it?" he sniffles, the memory of when Chanyeol told him he had a present for him, only to drop a big fat wriggly earwig into his open palm, fresh in his mind. "It's not dirty is it?"_

_Chanyeol shakes his head. "I don't think so. It's really special." He smiles, and it makes Kyungsoo want to smile too. "Close your eyes."_

_Unfolding his legs, Kyungsoo copies the other boy by moving onto his knees. He rubs his nose on the sleeve of his jumper before placing his hands in his lap and closing his eyes. He doesn't know why he trusts Chanyeol not to do something gross to him again, but the way Chanyeol was looking at him makes him feel warm and safe, even with nervousness still churning around inside him._

_He's expecting a gift, like a toy car or a nice pebble from the beach, or maybe something strange but meaningful, like the thimble from that muggle book Chanyeol let him borrow a few years ago. He doesn't expect to feel Chanyeol edging towards him, bringing his face closer and closer, until Chanyeol's lips press gently against Kyungsoo's own. It's an odd sort of feeling, soft and sort of wet, but it's nice, he thinks, to be with Chanyeol like this. All the bad feelings inside him disappear, and for the first time that day he feels happy and content, shining sun and freshly made chocolate pudding and all._

_It lasts for only a second. Chanyeol pulls away and Kyungsoo slowly opens his eyes, taking in the blush that has crept its way across Chanyeol's cheeks, all the way up to the tips of his floppy ears. "What did you do that for?" he stutters out, wiping his mouth with his sleeve._

_"It's a promise," Chanyeol says, voice so low it might as well be a whisper. "A promise that we'll always be friends. No matter what."_

_Kyungsoo can't help but smile. "Okay," he laughs, past unhappiness forgotten. "Friends no matter what."_

_Outside the treehouse, robins sing as they hop about on the snow covered bushes and trees. Inside, Kyungsoo feels warm, and not just because of the enchantments his father placed on the treehouse to keep out the cold. Like this, huddled away in his private place with his best friend at his side, Kyungsoo is happy. Chanyeol is Kyungsoo's special person, as his grandma says, and he hopes that never changes._

_Slapping his cheeks, Chanyeol sends Kyungsoo a brilliant, cheeky grin. "Mum was baking some cookies when I left. Do you want some?"_

_Kyungsoo nods, and with one last glance at that magnificent smile, he lets Chanyeol take him by the hand and drag him out of the treehouse._

 

~

 

The way Kyungsoo kisses Chanyeol is almost painfully tender. As delicately as a petal meets the ground, Kyungsoo takes Chanyeol's face into his hand, brushing his thumb along his cheek before kissing him softly, their lips slotting together almost perfectly. Kyungsoo's eyelashes flutter against his cheeks, and although it lasts a second, the whole scene seems frozen in time, suspended as the world around them disappears into smoke and mist. The air is electric, almost vibrating around them. Kyungsoo pulls back, eyes opening slowly like he's waking from a deep trance. Baekhyun and Jongdae move forwards, surrounding Chanyeol on either side of the bed as they search his face for any sign that their friend is okay, that the effects of the potion are finally, after all this time, broken.

Minutes pass, and nothing happens.

Chanyeol does not wake up. 

The realisation hits Baekhyun like a slap to the face. "No," he cries, rushing to Chanyeol's bedside. "No, no! This is supposed to work, he's supposed to be okay!"

"Baek-" Jongdae chokes out, but he's cut short by the rawness of his own throat. Baekhyun barely hears him as he grabs Chanyeol by the shoulders and starts to shake, urging him to do something, anything. 

"Wake up, you bastard!" he shouts desperately. "You can't do this to us! You can't, it isn't fair!" Chanyeol remains limp in his hands, limp and floppy and _dead_ , he is as good as dead and Baekhyun isn't having it. He refuses to let his best friend go without a fight. Kyungsoo looks horrified at what he's doing, still holding onto Chanyeol's hand, but Baekhyun doesn't care. He shakes even harder, rocking the bed back and forth with every push. "For Merlin's sake, wake up, please!!"

A pair of arms wraps around his waist and chest, tugging him backwards. Baekhyun struggles tooth and nail as Jongdae drags him away from the bed, away from Chanyeol, who now lies there crooked at Kyungsoo's side. "Let me go," he spits savagely, clawing at Jongdae's arms, "fucking let me go!" Spinning him around, Jongdae pulls Baekhyun into his arms, holding him so impossibly close that he can feel every single sob that forces its way through Baekhyun's body, can feel how he shatters into pieces with every scream that rips from his throat.

How could this happen? How could they have failed for the fourth time in a row? They were so sure, so confident that Kyungsoo was the one who could break the potion's curse. How could they be wrong? Baekhyun is a fool, so blinded by hope to realise that this plan was destined to fail. He should never have gotten his hopes up. Too drained to fight, Baekhyun slumps against Jongdae's chest, burying his neck into the other's shoulder as he struggles to breathe through his anger and heartbreak. 

Kyungsoo lets go of Chanyeol's hand. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry." From this angle, Baekhyun can't see his face, but he doesn't need to. The way Kyungsoo struggles through his words, like there is a noose around his neck, is enough.

They stand there for what seems like hours, but is probably only a few minutes. Wetness drips down the back of Baekhyun's neck, soaking through his shirt. Jongdae never cries, and it hurts Baekhyun's heart even more. Exhaustion bleeds into his bones and he closes his eyes, praying to whatever being there is out there that this is all just some horrible dream.

Suddenly, like a shift in the tide, there is a sound. A quiet, breathy sound, like distant wind or air seeping from an open window, so subtle that Baekhyun almost misses it. At first he thinks he's imagining things, but then it happens again, and again, each time a little louder and a little harsher, coming in waves that are too repetitive to ignore. 

He looks up from Jongdae's shoulder, searching for the noise. Kyungsoo has moved away from the bed, now sitting in the nearby visitors chair with his head in his hands, but the sound isn't coming from him. Baekhyun's heart stops when his eyes finally land on Chanyeol's face. The boy's eyes are still closed and his chest is barely moving, but something about him is so different from moments ago that Baekhyun has to blink a few times to check he's not imagining things.

Chanyeol's cheeks are pink.

Baekhyun blinks again, pushing out of Jongdae's embrace and bringing up his hands to rub at his tired eyes. He could have sworn that Chanyeol looked dead just moments ago. There's… there's no way, right? His despair must have caused him to see things that aren't really there. He's questioning his own sanity when flickers of movement draw him higher up Chanyeol's face to his eyes, which, whilst at once harrowingly still, are now twitching behind closed eyelids, flicking to and fro so fast his eyelashes are ever so slightly fluttering against his cheeks.

"Baek," Jongdae asks, staring at Baekhyun in concern, "what are you doing?" 

The noise from before suddenly spikes, the barely audible sound transforming into almost a snore, an exhalation of air so much stronger than before that it takes Baekhyun mere seconds to realise its coming from Chanyeol himself, echoing from deep within his chest, puffs of air forced out by weakened lungs. Baekhyun rushes forwards, swatting away Jongdae's attempts to stop him touching Chanyeol again, and he takes Chanyeol's hand, squeezing like his life depends on it. This can't be happening. He must be going insane.

Chanyeol's fingers start to curl around his hand.

"Fuck," he curses, so loudly that it makes Kyungsoo jump. "Fuck, he's waking up."

"Baekhyun, please-"

"No, look!" He can't believe himself as he says it. Chanyeol's grip is terribly weak but he's squeezing Baekhyun's fingers between his own, enclosing the smaller hand in his much larger palm in such a familiar way it leaves Baekhyun breathless. "He's holding my hand, goddamn it, Dae, he's waking up!!"

Jongdae immediately freezes. "What?" he asks, wasting no time in barrelling round to the other side of the bed. His eyes are immediately drawn to the redness that is bleeding all across Chanyeol's skin, and then to Baekhyun's hand. Long, broad fingers flex in Baekhyun's grip and Jongdae looks like he's about to keel over and faint on the spot.

"Shit!" Jongdae shakes himself back to reality and drops down to perch on the edge of the bed. "Chanyeol? Chanyeol, it's Jongdae, can you hear me?"

A groan, low and dry, rumbles out of Chanyeol's throat. His other hand, which rests on his chest, starts to clench, as do his toes, which twitch beneath his socks. Tears spring to Baekhyun's eyes once again, and he reaches up to stroke stray strands of Chanyeol's hair from his eyes. Chanyeol's skin is so, so warm, and when Baekhyun's fingers touch his face his nose wrinkles and eyes wince, a sight so wonderful that Baekhyun would laugh if he didn't feel like all the air has been sucked from his lungs through a straw.

"Come on," he pleads, watching in euphoria as Chanyeol's chest rises and falls heavily, grinning widely at the colours that bloom across his body like the tulips that sit not two metres away; reds, yellows, and pinks, blending beautifully with the blue of his veins and the tan of his sun-kissed skin. Even his hair looks different, soft and inviting, rather than coarse. Freckles litter their way across his nose. His eyes dance wildly underneath his eyelids. "You're so close. Come on, Chanyeol!"

Suddenly, as if someone had set off a whole box of fireworks underneath their feet, Chanyeol opens his mouth and sucks in a huge breath of air. It's all too much for his poor lungs to handle and ends up choking, upper body surging forwards as he coughs and splutters through his first proper breaths in over a month. His friends start to panic, hands shaking and voices raised in fear, but after a while his stifled breaths die down. Baekhyun and Jongdae are left on edge, terrified that something is going wrong. They hold onto him like they will die if they don't, watching him closely, waiting with bated breaths.

Finally, just as it becomes unbearable, Chanyeol stirs and opens his eyes.

Everything stops. The lunchtime bustle outside, the sound of Miss Luna's shoes on the cold stone floor, the tweeting of birds through an open window, everything. The world is silent, non-existent, as Chanyeol squints into the light, blinking rapidly until his eyes adjust. Baekhyun had forgotten how brown Chanyeol's eyes are - deep brown, sweet like caramel, dark like the bottom of the Black Lake - and across the bed from him Jongdae's mouth drops open, bottom lip quivering. Chanyeol brings a hand up to shield his eyes from the light and uses the other one to push himself up, letting out a little yelp of surprise when his arm buckles, too weak to hold him up.

Baekhyun and Jongdae immediately dive forwards, wrapping themselves around him and helping him up by his back as gently as they can. Chanyeol slumps in their hands, coughing slightly as he stretches his back and arms, wincing as his bones creak and crack from underuse. Yawning, he brushes his hair up from his forehead. His eyes widen when he spots his friends staring at him strangely, a mixture of disbelief, trepidation, and euphoria, etched into every inch of their faces.

"Ah shit," he croaks. "Did I oversleep again?"

Baekhyun and Jongdae explode. They throw themselves onto Chanyeol as soon as the words leave his mouth, laughing and sobbing hysterically as they take him into their arms. Chanyeol is _awake_ , he's awake, he's alive and there are no words in any language in the history of the world that can explain how goddamn happy they are to see him. Wrapping his arms around his shoulders, Baekhyun cries into Chanyeol's neck so hard it hurts his chest. Jongdae is a little more gentle, holding Chanyeol around the middle with his head against his chest, doing his best to not jostle him too much whilst simultaneously squeezing the hell out of him. They can't believe he's here, he's holding them against him and it feels so right. The boys would rather die than leave him alone for even a second, not when they've spent so many weeks wondering breath will be his last.

Chanyeol, on the other hand, is understandably confused. "Err, are you guys alright?" he says, chuckling awkwardly as his friends fall to pieces around him. "Did I miss something? Did someone die?"

"You bastard!" Baekhyun sobs. Merlin, he can't stop laughing. "You great, big, unbelievable bastard!" 

The sound of approaching footsteps pierce their cries, and the curtain surrounding Chanyeol's bed is pulled open completely. Miss Luna squeals in delight the moment she lays eyes on the boy in the middle of the huddle, her face beaming as she rushes forwards to grasp Chanyeol's hand, shaking it enthusiastically.

"Oh goodness, Chanyeol, you're finally awake!" she titters, earning her a confused look in reply, which she apparently doesn't notice. "How do you feel? Are you nauseous? Dizzy? Do you still feel the urge to sleep? Hold on, I'll get my charts!" She sprints away before Chanyeol can even answer, the clacking of her heels fading into the distance.

Turning back to his friends, Chanyeol scratches his head. "Seriously guys, what's going on?" He fixes them with a suspicious look. "Is this some kind of joke? Miss Luna is acting like _I'm_ the one that died." He frowns suddenly. "I didn't die, did I?" 

Merlin, they have so much to tell him, so much to say to make up for all the weeks they've spent without him by their side. They'll need to get him looked at by Miss Luna first, make sure he really is alright. And what of their other friends? Minseok and Luhan, Junmyeon and Yixing, Jongin and Sehun? They'll be so ecstatic to discover that Chanyeol is finally awake. The thought makes Baekhyun giddy with excitement, and after the celebrations have died down, Baekhyun and Jongdae will tell him everything. Every little thing. Chanyeol's sickness flipped their entire lives upside down, for better or for worse, and they'll be damned if they don't tell him every single detail they can remember.

Well, every single detail, besides one.

Remembering his promise, Baekhyun's sobs quieten down. He looks up from Chanyeol's shoulder, brow furrowing as he glances at the empty space around them. Sensing his sudden quiet, Jongdae looks up too. 

"What's wrong?" he asks worriedly.

"He's gone."

It takes a second for Jongdae to realise what Baekhyun means. 

Kyungsoo is nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: despite being known as 'the guy in their potions class', Kyungsoo actually shares several other classes with boys in a variety of other subjects. With the number of students per year being so small (approximately 10, judging from the books alone) it's impossible for them to only share one class. As of their sixth year, Kyungsoo shares Potions with Baekhyun, and Herbology and Charms with Baekhyun, Jongdae and Chanyeol. The beagles all take Transfiguration and DADA classes together as well. All their other classes are individual; Chanyeol takes Care for Magical Creatures, and Jongdae takes Muggle Studies and Arithmancy. Kyungsoo takes Divination, and his skills at Potions allow him to get private tutoring to study Alchemy, which is usually only taught in high demand.
> 
> The reason Kyungsoo is known as 'the guy in their potions class' is because Gryffindors and Slytherins more often than not shared their potions classes during their early years at school. It's only when they started sixth year that their classes began to overlap. I don't know if y'all will find any of this interesting, I just thought I would mention it lmao. World building is stressful kids, don't do it.
> 
> anyway, chanyeol is awake now !!! yay!!! and more chansoo !!!! finally you guys get what you came for fghjfgjk i hope it's alright ^^
> 
> this took an awfully long time to write, but i finally managed to hammer it out and get it all done in time for the new school year. this story isn't over yet, however!!!!!!!! there is still an epilogue, which i am writing as we speak!!! i'm not sure when i will be able to get it done as i am moving house in five days (yikes) but it will most likely be posted in the first couple weeks of september. but don't quote me on that. i want my boys to have a happy ending, and i'll be damned if i dont give them one !!!
> 
> as always, thank you for reading! please tell me what you think! feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://kokokysoo.tumblr.com/ask) or in the comments if you have any questions or simply just want to scream about stuff, i always reply and i'm always up for a chat!


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